My Dragon Husband, a Rurouni Kenshin fanfic by Raberba girl
Part 4
On the fourth night, as she made her way through the village, Kaoru glanced up at the moon and shuddered. It was waning at what she felt was an alarming rate; they were running out of time. That was why she was so glad to find, when she reached Kenshin, that his eyes were once again a soft violet.
"Kenshin," she whispered happily. "You've come back."
He sniffed at her searchingly, looking for the food. Kaoru hesitated. Then she laid her things aside and reached for his face.
His eyes on her were intent, but he let his head rest trustingly in her hands. She touched the chain that bound his mouth, looking for the lock. Then, decisively, she reached for the keys that she had stolen in preparation for this moment.
She did not know which key it was. Finding the right one was a long process, since she had to try each key one by one, and Kenshin did not like it. He shook his head back and forth, trying to throw her off; she finally sat on his neck so she could work more easily, and he resorted to growls and plaintive whimpers. "Don't you see I'm trying to get this abomination off you?" she said in exasperation.
When she was successful, she gasped in delight and then tried to tug the chain free. It was the last straw; he tossed her to the ground and shook his head violently, growling and crying out in discomfort.
"Kenshin, wait, let me-" She got back to her feet and reached for the end of the chain dangling from his restlessly moving face. She tried to unwind it, but he pulled free and scraped his face against the ground angrily, snarling again, his eyes beginning to glimmer with gold.
"Kenshin!" she cried, almost forgetting to keep her voice down. She could tell that the far-off guards were getting uneasy. "Kenshin, stay with me!"
The chain came free, slithering to the ground with a rattling clunk. He did not seem to realize it at first, but continued to shake his head back and forth, groaning in distress. Then his jaws cracked open for the first time in days. The sounds he made were heartwrenching, croaking and snapping as his tongue flicked in and out, trying to soothe the pain. Blood was welling up where the chains had chafed.
"Kenshin, my love," she whispered. "Come here so I can help you."
He ignored her. He raised his head as high as he could and emitted a sudden burst of flame at the sky. It was small and weak, from hunger and from the pain in his newly-freed mouth, but the roar that came with it was triumphant.
Kaoru closed her eyes in panic, knowing that the guards would be brought running by the noise. She had to keep them away from Kenshin...
Kaoru ran to meet them, deliberately calling attention to herself, babbling on about how she was preparing for the rite, and that they must disregard the beast's howls, she had it under control. Her speech and gestures took on a dramatic air, for she was desperate that they focus on her rather than the dragon with its missing bonds.
"Two days hence," she intoned impressively, "the blood of the Hitokiri will be spilled for the sake of our crops, for the pleasure of the earth mother. You have mistreated your offering to her, and the earth mother is angry. I will step in on your behalf, I will appease her anger, but you must allow me to prepare the Hitokiri without disturbance." It was the first nonsense that came into her head, and it suddenly made her angry that she could sound so much like one of the little human monsters.
"Kaoru-san," they were saying doubtfully, their eyes straying to the restless dragon.
"We thought we heard..."
"Weren't that fire-?"
Kaoru raised her head imperiously and was silent. For a minute no one moved. Then some of the guards began backing away reluctantly, muttering about sorcery; Kaoru resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
"We'll have to ask the headmen about this," someone finally said. "It won't be long now, Kaoru-san. Not certain what you're up to, but...in a couple days, it'll all be over."
"We will be ready," she said coldly.
The one who had spoken nodded, and turned away. Following his lead, the others left more quickly, some shooting nervous looks over their shoulders at Kaoru.
Her hands were clenched. "Monstrous little..." She shook her head. They were no longer her concern; her mate had come back to her at last, and once again it was their survival that was most important.
Kaoru went back to the agitated Kenshin to finish releasing him. She began to realize how it must be for humans sometimes, unable to communicate with every other beast in the world. The moment Kenshin found a part of himself free, he eagerly doubled his efforts against the rest of his bonds, not realizing that he would be released sooner if he stayed still. She understood; she remembered the instinct to seize the first opportunity with no logical thought at all. All the same, it was frustrating that he could not understand her speech, that all she had to interpret his own speech were her weak human eyes.
"Kenshin! Hold still!"
He shot more flame into the air as he thrashed around, frustrated that half of him was free and the rest of him was still stuck to the ground.
She finally tried a dragon call, one that meant something like, "Lie low." The sound of the awful croaking coming from her throat, virtually unrecognizable and unbelievably weak in comparison to a dragon's voice, made her squeeze her eyes shut in mortification - but she quickly opened them again when she realized that Kenshin had quieted. He was staring at her in surprise. She tried again, feeling her cheeks burn because she couldn't even tell what she was saying.
His eyes alight with curiosity, he wriggled forward and nudged her with his snout, his tongue flicking out at her. The moist heat of it scorched her skin, but she didn't care; she was reaching up gladly to run her hands over his scales. "I'm so sorry, my love. Did you even understand a thing I said?"
He grunted, the smelly heat of his breath washing over her, beautiful and sweet in its familiarity.
"Huh," she murmured in surprise. "Your breath stinks. I never noticed before. Perhaps it's no wonder humans don't like us."
Now that she had his attention, she went back to work. She laughed when his head followed her and butted at her in puzzled annoyance, wondering why she was not still trying to talk to him. "Almost done, Kenshin." She unlocked the last chain and cast it away. Kenshin, not noticing at first, licked her again and made conversational noises.
She put her hands on either side of his face and looked into his eyes. "Kenshin," she said softly. "You are free now. We must escape."
He was overjoyed when he realized it. He leaped immediately into the sky, then scrambled ungracefully back to the ground and made a very long whine of distress and hurt.
"Kenshin!" She ran to him, cursing herself for not having had the presence of mind to grab hold of him when he had taken off, and utterly grateful that somehow he was not leaving her after all. "Ken-" She stopped. The sword wound was bleeding again. It was still hurting him, he could not fly.
"It's all right, my love," she whispered, tears smarting her eyes. "We will just have to walk, like humans. I have been doing it for a while now; it's not so bad."
He kept keening for his lost flight, even after she managed to pull at him hard enough to make him follow her. It worried her that the guards would notice his noise moving away - would realize that they were escaping. "Sssh, ssh. Kenshin, hush." He did not respond; her words meant nothing to him. Far away she heard restless voices, and her fear spiked. "Kenshin!" She began to run. He followed her with awkward strides, trying forlornly not to outpace her.
They ran and then walked until they were exhausted, and then they hid. He did not like the dampness of the little cave, but he soon curled up with a sigh and fell asleep at once. Kaoru dragged herself over and looked at him, realizing that in his pain and distress he must have had very little sleep over the last few days. She tried to stay awake, listening for pursuers, but she too was tired. She fell asleep slumped against his hot scales.
She dreamed, as she so often did, of being a dragon. Alone. Coming- enemy, two-legged; danger! Flame, fight. Killed it. The last words on dying lips, a curse. Pain, confusion. Hard to see, hard to breathe. What's happened to me? I...I'm...!
Some time the next day, she woke with a start to the sound of chillingly familiar voices. Terror shot through her; she was on her feet at once, her heart pounding. She heard Kenshin stir behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder to find that he had raised his head. He must have smelled the humans outside, for he rose and crept in utter silence to the cave mouth.
"Kenshin!" Her voice was a terrified thread of a whisper. "No, come back!"
Taking no notice of her objection, he snaked outside. There was a sudden roar of flames, and the air was rent by horrible cries. "Kenshin!" Not bothering to keep her voice down this time, she rushed outside.
She stared and stared at the charred bodies for a long time, thinking of the Hitokiri these people had seen in her mate, thinking that they had mates of their own back in the village. Thinking of their need for spilled blood. "Kenshin," she said quietly, laying a hand on his neck. "Let's go."
They kept on the move, surviving, waiting, healing. She found that he would stay awake when she slept, and it became a pattern, an exchange, as they kept guard over each other. He caught their food, which they both ate burned black. She tried to practice making better dragon calls, which first confused and then amused him; he made nonsense sounds at her, trying to imitate human speech. Many times as they ate or rested, they just sat and gazed into each other's eyes, wondering.
'Why are you staying with me, protecting me?' she thought. 'I am a human, the enemy.' She might have cared for him in his captivity, but that did not change what she was now. She remembered how she had used to think of humans - mindless, savage animals, not worth a second thought, except to eat during lean times or to defend oneself from. She knew now that they had lives and loves and speech of their own, every bit as complex as that of dragons, but how could he know that?
Tears were leaking slowly out of Kenshin's unblinking violet eyes. They hissed into steam when they hit the ground.
Her heart pounding, Kaoru crawled close to him. He did not move, except to flick his tongue out at her in sad greeting. "Do you weep for me?" she whispered. "For your lost mate?" Trembling, she reached out to touch the dragon tears, then pressed herself against his face and let them pour over her.
The tears burned her skin; she cried out in pain but did not move even when her flesh felt like it was boiling. She felt sick, and she bent over to clutch at her stomach and squeeze her aching eyes shut. The heat did not fade, but it grew first bearable and then delightful. Her skin had erupted into an intense itching all over, but then the discomfort slid away like water and she did not even notice it going. The world was tilting; she lost her balance and fell, hearing the crackle of her skin and the cracking of her bones. Her teeth ached, grew, sharpened; then that pain too went away. In the end she lay limp and shaking, but overjoyed.
"My love," she whispered in a rumbling hiss.
He was nosing at her, licking her, caressing her with his wings, his tail whipping excitedly. "My love," he murmured into her mind, "my love, at last this one has found you. You were lost, all was lost. This one went mad with searching, that he did."
She raised her head and licked him. "I know. I saw your golden eyes."
He stared at her, aghast to learn that she had been prey in his sight. "You? That little two-legged thing..."
"Ah, Sword-heart, that was me," she said, translating his new name from sounds to thought. "I cared for you as best I could in that human form. Now I will care for you properly again."
He had tilted his head in puzzlement, trying to understand the concept of Name. "What is it you call this one?"
She smiled a dragon smile. "You are still my love, but you are also Sword-heart. The humans do this to call and to claim."
"Ah." He smiled back. "Then you are Fire-heart, that you are. After so much calling, you have come, and you are claimed, just as you have claimed this one forever."
She was so happy, for the first time in so long, that she was weeping. She got to her feet and went to him, and let her tears fall on his wound. He shuddered as the healing spread through him, then with a cry he surged up and took to the sky. She was beside him, soaring with him, and they danced in the air together once again, singing in joy and triumph.
o.o.o
Author's Notes: This is the only fic where I've given in to the anime and let Kenshin have purple eyes, since he's a dragon here. I'm fairly sure his eyes are supposed to be blue, which is more realistic in any case. This is also the closest I'll get to the unpleasant fandom!Battousai characterization.