So I had to think a lot about how this was going to go. I mean, the way I'm writing it deviates from the story itself enough to be complicated. Curse you attempt at vague realism in fairy tale contexts!

Anyone want to write a quick E/K Little Red Riding Hood? Mmmm. Wolf Enishi. . .

I would love if more people would adapt fairy tales to E/K. I'd write more of them but if I don't seriously stick to making this my last chapter fic then I'll never get to my original stuff. I'm not above begging. I'll write oneshots, and I do trades!

With Enishi finally appearing in American RK manga markets sometime soon (or has it already come out) I think everyone should push the E/K lines of thought if they can (or feel inclined)! Alternate pairings can be hard to ship. . . . sigh It won't be really obvious until islands come into play. Heh heh heh.

Blarg, I better get started on that next chapter now. . .

Disclaimer: (See Ch. 1)

Chapter 4

"So then. . ."

"So then I told her that he wasn't my son, no way."

Enishi looked at Sano in that way that sometimes reminded Sano of this one loan shark he had been, er, friends with. Just as long as he didn't start smiling. Enishi was creepy as all hell when he smiled.

"Sagara." Enishi tried to be calm, but he could tell that this conversation was already going to go in a way he wasn't going to be happy with. "Did you let that girl think that we are all brothers?"

"Ha, ah, maybe not in those exact words. But um, effectively, sure. It's better than the truth. The truth is a lot less easy to believe and it's just a little white lie."

Was it Sano's imagination, or was there a vein throbbing near Enishi's forehead. "So how did you explain that I have white hair and light eyes? And might I remind you that while you and the kid may have at least some surface resemblance that Aoshi looks entirely different from the rest of us. What of our different family names? Did you even think before you spoke?"

"Of course I did." Sano had backed away a step or two. On the same side or no, Enishi still scared him sometimes. Aoshi had made a point to take Sano aside once and warn him about Yukishiro. He hadn't been part of the palace guard and he might not be able to be trusted entirely. In fact, Aoshi had said, Yukishiro had probably been the head of some shady business projects before Shishio took everything over. The odds were good that he had been a criminal. Allies did not mean friends. Moments like this drove that point home for Sano. "And she never asked what our last name was."

"Then what, and you had better have a really good explanation for this, happened to our parents?"

Sano had had enough of this third degree crap. Aoshi was going to do the exact same thing when he got back tonight. While Enishi was scary, Aoshi was still his captain and that made it marginally worse. He wasn't sure why that was.

"They're dead. Shishio, disease, accident, it doesn't matter. So long as she doesn't ask for any particulars we're fine. And as for the last name thing, uh, I don't know. You can tell her that they're our middle names or something and we'll just make up a last name later." Sano waved a hand absently, as if he were not at all worried about this. "What's your problem, you've been wound up tight since she got here."

Enishi picked up his half of the load of wood they were bringing back to the cabin. It was warm out, even under the shelter of the trees, and both men were sweating heavily. They had stopped to rest because it was a long walk with a weighty load of wood and because they were conveniently alone and could chat.

"She reminds me of someone." Was all Enishi supplied before he left Sano behind quickly.

Kaoru looked around in mild to moderate shock. The house, in all its glory, was a pigsty. In many ways it was worse than a sty, because the pigs had always looked surprisingly pink and clean in all that straw and mud. It was certainly much dirtier than the stables, and smelled a heck of a lot worse too. If these boys' parents had died around when Shishio came to power then that would probably date the dust as two years thick. You'd think one of them would get married or something in the mean time. If for nothing else than to have someone to cook and clean. She thought Enishi at least would be mercenary enough for that from what she'd seen of him. Some moldy places on the floor looked like it might conquer the south side of the house given another year. Kaoru shuddered and grabbed her dingy clothes from the upstairs.

Outside, in back of the house, she had found a pump and put her back into it to get some water. She hadn't been able to find any soap, but she still tried to wash her clothes as she could. The mud came off but it didn't change the fact that the clothes were both old and ugly. Even the blanket she was currently wearing was made of finer fabric. Sure she had managed to plead with the palace seamstresses to add some velvet patches on the elbows and knees to make it nicer to move around in during the day, but those were worn and ruined in nearly every case. If it were possible to do some work and somehow pay for the fabric she needed to make clothes, then that would be something. But an impulse inside of her, as much as she needed help, made her not want to ask for even the slightest bit of charity. She had to be strong in the face of adversity and other encouraging clichés. Kaoru was, before anything else, a princess with the pride (though perhaps not the self confidence) to go with it.

With a sigh she dropped the sodden garments. It was hard to keep hold of your pride when you couldn't even take care of yourself. Hard breathing alerted to her that someone was coming before she even saw them turn round the side of the house. Enishi startled her by appearing at a near run with a load of firewood that would have broken her back if she had even lifted it. And she wasn't all that weak.

"Oh," He said, sweat pouring down his face now that it was approaching noon and the temperature was rising in addition to his exercise. "It's you. You're still here."

She didn't appreciate being talked to like that. It evoked images of her past in ways she couldn't explain to him even if she wanted to. More than a decade of being unwanted had left her with what her second tutor had called 'abandonment issues'. He had been a weird one, leaving after a short time around her tenth birthday. The irony had escaped her at that age.

"Yes I'm still here. I don't have anywhere else to go, and no clothes either it seems." For some reason this caused the white haired man to flinch slightly and Kaoru, unfortunately, correctly interpreted why. "I suppose I have you to thank for some of these torn seams." She shook her wet shirt at him, casting droplets in a wide arc.

"I did what needed to be done and you should be grateful to me that I had the sense to get you out of those clothes before you caught a fever." There was no sense of him being intimidated by her. The boy gaped at her and Sano deferred to her, but Enishi was different from either of them in a way that she couldn't fully grasp. "You should act more delicate, or at least more polite. Your behavior thus far. . ."

Kaoru didn't know how he managed to flawlessly push every emotional trigger inside of her. "You have no right to dictate my behavior, sir. Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am? I. . . er. . ." She had only just managed to catch it. Going around announcing her presence was just about as stupid as could be. But something about her last statement had shaken him.

"I think—I know—that you are just some runaway who didn't have sense enough to use a major road to cross the border and if you know what's best for you you'll keep going before you get yourself in trouble here." He was eerily calm as he spoke, with an edge that gave her chills. "And we don't need any trouble."

"I am not talking to you anymore." She refused to allow herself to be intimidated. "Where is Sano? I have something to ask him."

As if she had summoned him by mentioning his name, the affable man appeared with a similarly large pile of wood and dumped it on the pile before looking at the man and woman glaring at one another. Being the pleasant and friendly person he was, he took one moment to test out the feeling in the air and decided that inside the house was the best place to be. He had made it two steps towards the door when Kaoru broke her staring match with Enishi and yelled over to him.

"Wait! I have something to ask you!"

Enishi began to stalk off, but not before giving a parting shot over his shoulder than made Sano roll his eyes. "Yes, Sano is just full of all sorts of helpful answers today."

Kaoru thought about sticking out her tongue at him as he went in search of Yahiko to direct his training more, but decided to keep her dignity. There were more important things, like making sure she got some new clothes.

"So, Sano, I guess it's been hard on all of you since your parents died. With Yahiko so young it couldn't have been long ago. . ."

"Uh," Sano seemed miserable for some reason, and Kaoru thought it was all the bad memories she was conjuring up. She suddenly felt terrible for bringing up her favor this way. "Yeah."

Still, she had brought it up so she might as well forge ahead. She had always prided herself on her stubborn persistence. "Things here obviously have not experienced a woman's touch in some time. Like in the area of dusting."

"Dusting?" Her sudden new topic totally confused Sano.

"Yes, dusting, maybe a good scrubbing, cleaning out the ashes in the fireplace, and most of the dishes look cracked at best and crusty with old food bits. . . I can go on but I think maybe you understand my meaning." She took a deep breath and took the plunge. "If you haven't gotten rid of all your mother's clothing then I would be glad to clean things up for some old clothes. It would take me a week at most, especially if I had to alter any of the clothes, but you would all appreciate the added comfort. And if you send me off with a little food then I'll even do laundry."

This was a big chance she was taking. Other than watching the palace maids, of which there was practically a legion, she was not really sure how to do anything but the most basic of chores around a house. If she had to polish silver, she might be in more familiar territory, but if she just scrubbed things and organized then how would they know if she were a cleaning maven or not?

"I don't know. . ."

Kaoru turned on her charm, or what she could. It was helped along greatly by her revealed beauty and Sano tried not to goggle at her as her eyes grew large and wistful. "I don't have anyone else to turn to. This way I can be useful and you can get rid of me without any worry or guilt. I'll figure things out on my own, but until then you can help me, can't you?"

It never crossed her mind for a minute that he would say no. And maybe if things had been solely up to him, then her mind could have been at rest right there. Under pressure, Sano did the thing he had always done before on non-combat decisions like these, he looked up on the chain of command.

"We'll have to wait until Aoshi gets home. He's our, uh, oldest brother. What he says goes around here."

"There's another brother? Your family is so big, how lucky you are." They were lucky, for this many young men to be together in a family still was rare these days. "When does your other brother get home?"

"Aoshi? Well, he'll be back before dark, I think."

Kaoru, seeing an opportunity, went for it. "Then I'll start cleaning anyway and make myself busy until he gets home. Nothing wrong with that, right? It's the least I can do to thank you anyway, for saving me." Someday, she told herself, it won't be about scraping by with doing small favors and menial jobs. Someday she would find people who could really help her. Someday she would find her champions.

Until then she had some cleaning to do. She would have rolled up her sleeves if her blanket-dress had had any.

It had been two years since she had been in a dress of any sort, and Kaoru found that she hadn't properly remembered how restraining it could be if a person were trying to work at something with any sort of vigor. The cleaning was going, for lack of a better term 'infuriatingly'. It was an ungainly thought, a word pulled straight out of the pages of her last etiquette tutor's common list of phrases, but accurate for the moment.

Some of it was the headache that reasserted itself as the heat in the house climbed and her blood pumped hard from the exercise she was getting. She had been nearly concussed last night so this was no surprise. Kaoru gritted her teeth and ignored the pain.

Some of it had been the extreme hopelessness of not knowing where to begin. She had never been a housecleaner, and in fact seemed to have problems with many of the practical arts that she was vaguely aware went into a house. Even her sewing was a little suspect, despite her assurance that she could alter any clothes that Sano could provide. But Kaoru was never one to doubt herself and knew that whatever she told herself she could do she could probably manage it at some level.

But this was no mere two years of grime, it was two years of lived in grime which meant it was rubbed into every surface. A tabletop that she had thought was some sort of dark grained wood turned out to be light after she scrubbed it for an hour, just to have a clean surface on which to put other clean things. It was easy to attack the cupboards, laying out all the varied food items, tools, and other miscellany that had somehow made it in. Then, she scrubbed the spaces out with soapy water and an old crusty towel she had found in the back of one high up cupboard.

By the time it was evening that was all she had managed to do, as well as put everything back in their place according to the order she thought made the most sense. No one had tried to come in since she had had her little talk with Sano, and she assumed he had warned everyone of what she was doing. Then again, if he had told the other two she wouldn't have been surprised if Enishi had charged in and demanded she butt out of their lives. No, more likely everyone was simply avoiding her.

When the sky began to darken, she started to get a little apprehensive. Sweat poured off of her in droplets and her hair hung limp and damp against her head and shoulders, but she had organized the cupboards and all the dishes. The dishes weren't clean yet, but they were all in a passable sense of order. Cleaning those was the tomorrow's order of business. Then she could work on the stove and move out from there, assuming she was still here.

Where was this Aoshi person?

Kaoru's mind was quickly driven away from speculating when all three of the men practically burst into the house. Yahiko wandered over, no doubt in charge of making the next meal, while Sano and Enishi settled into some broken down chairs in the corner where the fireplace sat and proceeded to say nothing and do nothing. She wondered why none of them were looking at her, pointedly, when Yahiko began to complain before Kaoru could finish forming the way she was going to scold them.

"Where's the big wooden spoon?"

"In that can along with the other big wooden utensils." She pointed and Yahiko looked at her, seemed to go into a daze for a moment and then snap out of it to grumble and grab the spoon he wanted.

Kaoru started to wander over to Enishi and Sano when the next question came. "Where did all the oil go?" She turned around and walked back over, only to point emphatically at the little shelf near the stove where the oil was. Right next to the spice rack she had found stuffed away. There had been a peg for it on the side of a cabinet and everything.

Her peace was short lived. "I can't find the—" This time she didn't wait for the complaint to come.

"Look, should I cook dinner? Since you can't seem to navigate the kitchen area anymore?" Kaoru had no idea how to cook. Food came out of kitchens mysteriously and then was deposited in her belly. The finer points of actually cooking substances were only things she had seen in snatches over the two years in which begging for food in the palace kitchen in winter was one of the main sports of the poor and the underfed worker.

"Go ahead. It'll take me forever because of your cleaning." The last word sounded dirty in his mouth but she couldn't scold him for a rude inflection.

Yahiko wandered over to the other two and then began to talk in low tones with them. She ignored them, guessing she was the main subject and that today just wasn't promising in general. Tomorrow might be better. Even tonight held the mysterious fourth brother who could be the one to save her or to cast her out to certain death from exposure or hunger. Her thoughts had taken on a dramatic edge as she heated up a pot of water. Tonight's dinner was going to be meat and potatoes because she knew you boiled potatoes and it was easy to fry meat because she had seen Yahiko do it this morning. Dinner solved.

It was pretty dark by the time she finished cooking. Boiling water had taken a lot longer than she thought it would. Next time she would just cook the potatoes in with the meat. Maybe that would be faster. As it was, she had overcooked the meat and undercooked the potatoes. To make up for it she had dumped lots of spices over everything. It wasn't unpalatable as a supper, but it sure wasn't gourmet either.

The men sat there poking at their shriveled meat and still thinking it was better than nothing when Enishi suddenly looked very intently at the door. The knob turned and rattled a bit as the door swung out. From outside a serious looking man strode in. She didn't need any process of elimination to tell that this was the one among them who kept his bed more neat and precise than any palace maid could. It exuded from him, the need to be in control and calm. The way Enishi tensed, she noticed smugly that he wasn't the type who wanted to take anyone's orders but his own and the return of the brother in charge was something that displeased him. The other two at the table looked relieved.

"Aoshi, glad you're back. You're just in time for dinner. . . lucky you. . ." Sano managed to not sound sarcastic at that last part, and Kaoru thanked him for it mentally.

"Who is that?"

He certainly was to the point, Kaoru thought. The three men looked at one another vying to see who would begin. Naturally, it would be Yahiko who felt the need to start things off with a complaint about how she had crashed into their lives and had now rearranged the kitchen in some strange attempt at sabotage. Aoshi looked at him steadily and Yahiko fell silent as if he had had the wind knocked out of him. Sano tried next since Enishi was proving to be a study in patience. This version was a little more chronological, but not particularly detailed and ended with her request of him earlier for shelter in exchange for housecleaning and cooking. Kaoru found herself raising an eyebrow at the part about cooking. Yahiko must be truly terrible at such things if even this misconceived dinner prompted a promotion to housecleaner and cook.

After Sano's version Aoshi regarded Enishi with his stoic gaze and Enishi simply stared back, that familiar smirk playing on his lips. It must be an unconscious facial tick, or something, because she could have sworn he was mightily displeased to have Aoshi back. She couldn't hide her own emotions very well, and knew it. Then again, normal families talked to one another long enough to have arguments, and he may have been dealing with these issues for years. Kaoru had heard from people that normal families did that. Normal families didn't have the opportunity to avoid one another for months on end in large castles. While it looked as though Aoshi and Enishi were ready to hold their position staring at one another until Ragnorak, Kaoru wasn't about to let things go without her say.

"Excuse me, but don't you want to hear from me?" She stood up, leaning on the table as if to support herself, but really trying to look at least a little bit intimidating. "I know that I'm intruding on your lives but I'd rather speak before you all sentence me."

Aoshi nodded his head, still listening. Kaoru felt herself tear up a little as she recapped her story of having to leave and getting lost in the woods, but pushed past it and tried to make her need clear. "I was driven from where I lived without being given any choice in the matter. If it were up to me I wouldn't be asking for your help because I'd like to think I'm the kind of person who can take care of herself. But right now I can't and all I'm asking from you is the chance to pull myself together and make a clean start. In return I'll cook and clean for you, yes, but I'll be gone as soon as I possibly can."

In a movement so slow Kaoru thought a glacier could surpass him, Aoshi tilted his head to the side and took a deep breath. "I'll tell you my decision in the morning. Yahiko, make up a bed down here near the fireplace. I need to sleep and there is much to discuss tomorrow in addition to the matter of. . . what's your name?"

Finally someone had asked, but now that the moment was here she was sure that they were all too distracted by other things than to notice how unusual her name was. "Kaoru."

". . . the matter of Kaoru." Aoshi moved to get some food while Yahiko grumbled and began to go about the task set to him. Enishi had mysteriously disappeared and Sano was asking Aoshi how things in town were only to get short and concise answers. All this meant was that Sano had to ask more questions. Kaoru took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. They wouldn't turn a helpless girl out into the woods. She was sure of it. Well, mostly sure. Even odds. Maybe she should ask if she could at least keep the blanket.

Aoshi found Enishi at his exercises as soon as he was reasonably sure the others were in bed or asleep. Something about the girl bothered him, but didn't alarm him, and he wanted a second opinion from the ex-criminal about what sort of person this girl was. Yukishiro was acting uncharacteristically antagonistic around her. There had always been a low level of dissatisfied irritation with the current situation from him, but this woman was bringing out far more extreme and varied reactions if Sano's report was correct. If she were a spy, then undoubtedly Enishi would have found something out or sensed something after a full day of her. The girl's unusual beauty was already cause for suspicion, but beyond that she hadn't displayed any extraordinary traits. In fact, her cooking was rather on par with Yahiko's.

Even though he did not announce his presence, the subtle change in stance to anticipate an attack from behind told Aoshi that Enishi had sensed him. Yukishiro's nerves were always uncannily sharp. He would have made a great officer in the King's Army. . . what a waste.

"What of the girl?"

There was no halt to Enishi's smooth movements, the long sword flashing and his limbs gliding from one position to the next. "She's just a pretty girl. I assume she tried to steal a horse or something from her employer, because her clothes smelled of a stable, and got exiled. Pretty lenient for such a crime, really. Nothing else makes sense."

"She isn't lying?"

"Her tells are too obvious. I asked her about her experience as a housekeeper over dinner, and she tried to lie before she admitted to knowing nothing. I doubt she's capable of lying." Enishi dropped what he was doing in the middle of a complicated slashing move. "She's no threat to us."

"Then you think she should stay."

The glasses that were sliding down his nose were firmly replaced with a firm shove from one finger on his hand before Enishi replied. "I didn't say that."

"So she should go?"

There was a pregnant pause where the sounds of the wood at night rushed in on them now that they were both still. "I didn't say that either."

Kaoru was awake when Aoshi slipped out, but she didn't notice him at all. She was too intent on her own tense near misery. Naturally she would have to wait in suspense while they all probably talked about her upstairs. What could they be saying? She tried to imagine it and was simply left with the feeling like she should storm up there and yell at them until they relented. That was the leftover spoiled kid in her speaking. So much of her was still childish in some ways. There was never a more terrifying time to think about your own level of competence when you were faced with the immediate prospect of being, well, thrust out to fend for yourself.

The thought of what tomorrow might bring filled her with enough apprehension to keep her awake. Absently she noted how greasy the window was where it wasn't crusted with dirt and her mouth pulled into an involuntary smile. It was no lie that they could use someone to clean. At least she knew that they would be living in squalor if they turned her out and it would be their own fault.

Every muscle was tensed in her body, each nerve screaming and awake, so later on when Enishi came back in from his exercises she actually heard him walking through the house.

"Hello?" She hadn't heard anyone leave and she looked by the fire for where the poker lay just in case the scream she was ready to belt out didn't wake up the men upstairs. They could very well be heavy sleepers.

Familiar glasses glinted in the light of the candle she still had lit in her corner, sadly melted into a near puddle. Her hand stopped creeping towards the solid metal poker, but didn't recede from it either.

"Why are you down here?"

He looked at her as if she had no right to question him, but in the end he satisfied her curiosity. "I was out. You don't have to look so frightened. If I was going to harm you it would have happened already. I'm not a monster." He let the corner of his mouth pull up.

"Well it's not like you've given me much to have faith in." She was annoyed at having been frightened by him, and her already high strung mood was taking its toll on her patience. At least it was something she could release some of that pent up tension on. "You've been treating me like I had some sort of communicable disease ever since I got here."

"You're no servant, are you?"

Oh crap. "Why would you say that?" She didn't like being put on the defensive so quickly. Why did he have to dominate the conversation with such ease?

"I haven't told the rest of them yet, but Aoshi is bound to notice if he bothers to talk to you for very long. I've been around him long enough to figure out how he thinks. You'll probably get to stay." He leaned forward, letting the smirk spread out slowly. "But know that it's only because I didn't make a case for kicking you out. Until I figure out just what you are, you can stay with us. I'm watching you. . . Kaoru."

The man looked so damn smug she wanted to slap him, but at least he had brought her some good news. Already the adrenalin that had been tensing her body eased out and left total exhaustion in its place.

"I suppose I should thank you. This once I'll forget about what a jerk you're being and thank you. . . Enishi."

She actually did stick her tongue out at his retreating back this time.