Disclaimer: if you recognize it, it's not mine. if you don't recognize it, it's still probably not mine. except cobweb. she's mine.

Summary: In the beginning of all the best stories, everyone meets in a tavern. Theodore Kurita, Coordinator of the Draconis Combine, gets a different ending, or possibly a new beginning. Definitely Multicross.

Warnings: neither rokugan nor the inner sphere are nice places sometimes.

Ouroboros

By Dragon of Dispair

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As instructed, he stayed out of sight with Ik'rik'uk. He had no desire to be noticed anyway. This was difficult; the keep really wasn't large enough for all the people currently residing in it. It was so crowded that many of the courtiers spent their days in the village, frequenting the inns and sake houses (some of which hadn't been there when winter began) and the keep was still over crowded with those who wanted to stay near the Emperor. When the weather was nice, the two of them stayed outside in the gardens, hiding. Ik'rik'uk was endlessly interested in exploring the human "warren" and was actually quite good at doing so undetected, and he came back to Theodore to ask questions about what he'd seen when the interactions between humans confused him. Convincing him not to steal various unattended objects had been a bit of a trial, but he'd managed to convince the Nezumi that a good scout left no trace of his passage.

Despite his lack of memory for such things as words (especially written or complicated words) and concepts foreign to him (including time Theodore found; everything in the past was yesterday, while everything in the future was tomorrow, with both yesterday and tomorrow being mostly irrelevant. Theodore found it a strange mindset for a people who called themselves the Brave Warriors Who Remember but apparently history was the domain of the Rememberers, of which Ik'rik'uk was not.), any military unit would have been thrilled to have him for a scout, if they could overcome the fact that he was a giant rat.

While the Nezumi explored and observed, Theodore busied himself with finally taking the time to work on his kimono. The green and brown one he'd taken from Matsuo needed washing, patching and repair, as did his burial kimono. Both would remain in good condition for some time yet, though Matsuo's had required a new hem lining to stop the fraying. He needed a third obi, and though it was blue he thought hard about repairing A'Timitr'D'n'Kir's gift and using it. He'd earned a place here (shamed as his host was to have a ronin underfoot when the emperor had been unexpectedly trapped here) for the winter, but he still had no income; he needed to decided if the blue obi was repairable, or if he needed to spend the money for a new one.

The only thing stopping him was the question of if he'd be dishonoring the gift if he altered it, or not.

"It is a gift-gift to remember his scent," had been Ik'rik'uk's answer when asked. "No-hairs no have strong noses."

It had been a singularly unhelpful an answer.

So while he pondered the question of the blue obi, he busied himself with threading his name and other identifying marks onto his two newer kimono with the thread scavenged from the bandits' cave. No one in Rokugan would put a black and red dragon on any sort of garment, so Theodore did it himself. His request to the house's servants for a needle and embroidering hoop had been met with furtive questioning looks in return. Embroidery was not one of the arts considered necessary of a samurai, either here or in the Combine, and was generally considered a woman's art. But like sewing and patching, a DCMS soldier often picked it up, if only to stitch his name on garments before they went through the communal wash. The resulting dragons were not perfect, but they served.

He also, after lighting a stick of incense in honor of the dead, added a small, encircled wolf's head in the same red and black to one sleeve of both kimono, though he left his burial kimono without this particular embellishment. He was loathe to alter that one more than absolutely necessary. He had never imagined being both gaijin and ronin. As unorthodox as the Legions of Vega had been, they were still part of the DCMS. For all his conflicts with his father, Takashi had still been his father and Lord, and he'd been his son and samurai. But as long as he was selling his services and collecting bounties to buy rice and shelter, he could think of no better symbol of mercenary honor than Wolf's Dragoons.

It was while he stitched the first of those wolf's heads onto the blue kimono that he was interrupted by someone other than Ik'rik'uk, despite the fact that he was currently seated under a tree and behind a snow-covered hedge that both concealed him from view.

"Thou are thinking heavy thoughts, ronin." Theodore looked up from his uncooperative needlework. This was the third time he'd restitched the circle, it coming out twice before as more of an oval than a circle, and had taken the precaution of drawing the wolf's head on the cloth in charcoal before continuing. "I see them hanging off thine shoulders like fishing weights," the woman was dressed in red and yellow bearing the mon he now knew belonged to the Phoenix clan.

It grated on Theodore's sensibilities to be the one to stand, bow, and introduce himself first.

"Isawa Takara," she answered and he turned to gather up his stitching to let her have the garden. "Thou've not answered me, Te-o-do-san. " He stiffened, reminding himself that she meant no insult, as he had every time he'd been addressed since he came here.

"Call me Kurita, please," he said.

She glided closer. "Kurita is not a family of the Empire."

"Think of it as a ronin's name, if you must," he returned as politely as he could, "but the way I've heard my given name mangled since," dying, "becoming ronin is distressing to me."

She hummed thoughtfully as she examined the still-green needles of the strange looking conifer that had sheltered him while he worked. "Such was not my intent."

"I know," he circled her a bit to escape the garden before she took offense at his presence or this conversation. "The sounds are difficult. It's the reason I would prefer to be addressed by my family name."

"Thou has no reason to leave, Kurita-san," she halted his progress to the entrance of the small garden. "I came to speak with thee." He simply waited wishing he'd managed to escape her. He did not know the purpose for which she had sought him out. Most of the guests - those who had accepted the General's invitation to come and court his daughter over winter court as well as those who were part of the Emperor's entourage and had been trapped here by the storm with him - had opted to pretend he didn't exist and he had returned the favor. Those whom had acknowledged him he avoided with even more diligence than the rest. He had no wish to be caught up as a disposable pawn of this world's politics. Once upon a distant star, he would have done almost everything to cut himself free of the politics to which he had been born, even as he competed with the various Warlords and politicians for his father's favor and with his father for influence over the empire that would one day be his to rule, and it was frustrating now to be without authority and yet still entangled.

He did not know what she wanted. She would not have been the first to try and net him into one of the various schemes that had popped up like mushrooms in a fairy ring the instant the snows had closed them in. To cut off the most obvious avenues of entrapment, he had let it be known - both via the servant's rumor mill and directly to anyone who inquired - that he considered himself to be in the employ of their host. Though the service for which he had been hired had effectively evaporated the minute the Emperor had been unexpectedly snow-locked in this unimaginably tiny keep and politics had shifted to revolve around him rather than the daughter of the lord of a very minor keep, he would not be negotiating any potential contracts until nearly spring. He also would not be accepting any "favors" or "gifts" or even "advice"; such things always came with a price.

All of which would be difficult to adhere to if the offer came from someone too important, he acknowledged, which was why he had acceded to his host's request that he keep himself to himself.

"I am not accepting offers of employment at this time, Isawa-san," he said politely.

"I'm not making any," she said distantly, still staring at the pine needles. He was beginning to think she might not be entirely anchored to the same reality he was. Of course his reality included the knowledge of distant stars, great wars on a nearly imaginable scale, and the coils of a serpent disguised as a tavern that connected those things to here so maybe that wasn't a fair observation. "I'm curious what could trouble the mind of a ronin so greatly. Thine thoughts are heavy as any great samurai's, and the weight of worlds lurks in thine every word. Thou moves, and the spirits move with thee though thou does nothing to command or cajole them to service."

"I'm certain I know nothing of what you speak." This woman suddenly reminded him of A'Timitr'D'n'Kir. He had couched his prophecy in language of strength of Name, and had warned him of something 'Tomorrow'. When nothing ominous had manifested the next day, he'd mostly dismissed the words, but he knew more of Nezumi now; A'Timitr'D'n'Kir''s 'Tomorrow' could easily be still yet to come. He wondered if he was going to receive another warning, just in case he hadn't taken the first one to heart.

She smiled, huffed an almost-laugh. "I see thou does not," she looked at him and blinked a long, slow sweep of lashes that didn't disguise how she didn't quite focus on him. "Thus I ask thou of thine thoughts."

"Ah," he answered vaguely, stalling, but then shrugged. This could still be political, but the connection with A'Timitr'D'n'Kir he'd made tempted him to believe otherwise: this was not human politics, but motivated by whatever guided the actions or words of prophets regardless of species. "Nothing important," he still hedged, holding out the embroidery to show her. "I was concentrating only on this."

She examined the stitched circle and charcoal outline without touching it. "A wolf is a strong and honorable symbol for one who has been cast out upon the waves."

She referred to the wolf banner of Toturi's Army, the collection of ronin who had served the Emperor-to-be before he'd so much as thought to claim the throne. He referred to mercenaries of a different mold, but the parallels were undeniable, another undercurrent of symbolism that threatened to send him into a downward spiral of reminiscing on a past that proved time and time again to be not so far in the past, despite being a lifetime and a world behind him.

"Yes it is," was all he said though.

"But it is not thine," she said with certainty. It was not a hard guess to make; while he worked on the embroidery today he wore his burial kimono with the Combine Dragon emblazoned in all its glory. "What is this wolf to thee that the eyes of ghosts and gods follow every stitch?" She lowered herself to a proper sieza position in the cold dry needles beneath the tree.

He was not sure he liked that she was settling in to listen. "It is a story of ronin, Isawa-san, not a story of proper samurai."

She smiled. "Phoenix has many such stories. Wave men can be heroes as well, fighting for love and for a place in a new clan."

"This will not be one of those stories," he warned as he hesitantly resumed his place under the tree. "This is a story of mercenaries and mercenary honor." She nodded her understanding and he laid out his stitching to buy himself time to think. Not only did this story fail to cast his family in a positive light, but he was also mindful of how small this world was and that he did not wish to cast himself as a gaijin as well as a ronin. He also had no wish to hear other familiar names mangled by a tongue unused english sounds. She waited with every appearance of patience, watching his stitching. He had almost retraced the charcoal outline in black thread before he spoke again; perhaps it was best to present it a more of a fairytale than the true story it was. "Once upon time, to a war ravaged five kingdoms came a mercenary-king from beyond their borders…"

And so, in story, Jaime Wolf became Yohei-sama, whose soldiers possessed the speed and teeth of wolves; Natasha Kerensky became Lady Kumo, who, in addition to the wolf-skin powers of her leader, possessed her own unique spider bites. Cautious of the Clan (and Clan) symbolism and how it overlapped strangely with the various animal symbols and nicknames of those from his home stars, he was careful to be specific. Rather than just calling the Coordinator the Dragon as he might have before, he called his father the Black Dragon, giving the symbol a sinister foreshadowing. He called Grieg Samsonov the Hungry Ghost and Minobu Tetsuhara Tomodachi-sama, the most honored friend. Fairytale names for fairytale characters.

He told the story of Yohei-sama, the powerful mercenary whose supernatural wolf-powers helped him defeat those he was hired to fight, but were sometimes little help in evading the tricks and traps of his employers. Instead Yohei-sama and his pack used his cleverness and contracts to wiggle away from every animal-Lord who tried to trap him. He told some of the most outrageous rumors that had circulated around Wolf's Dragoons as fairytale truths. Yohei-sama and his brother were nursed on the milk of a she-wolf and grew strong running with their wolf-mother's pups. Lady Kumo charged into battle clothed only in courage and wolf-skin as Natasha had been rumored to go nude in the cockpit of her battlemech (a rumor he did know was an untruth). Dressed in their wolf-skins, Yohei-sama's pack could fire a volley of arrows of fire over the horizon, and there did not exist a better archer than the Mercenary King himself (as Jaime had once piloted an Archer). They could flatten a forest with a gesture, and the most well-forged katana could no more scratch their skins than one could hold a distant star in one's hand. Nothing was too much for the heroes of the tale.

He told the story of Yohei-sama's employment to the Black Dragon as a tale of shame. Yohei-sama, as the hero of the fairytale was a creature of honor, professionalism and integrity, while the Black Dragon and the Hungry Ghost, the villains, followed Bushido and shamed themselves in the doing, condemning Tomodachit-sama to seppuku for their pride.

He ignored the long years between the beginning of his father's feud with Jaime Wolf and its end and wrapped up the tale not with a heroic battle, but with betrayal and the Black Dragon's seppuku on the eve of the anticipated vengeance.

Isawa Takara listened patiently. Theodore was surprised. He had his own conflicts regarding the whole sordid history, but believed the mistakes had been made on both sides (most especially by himself); to give power to the tale, though, he'd erased the shades of grey and done his best to tell as story wholly from the point of view of the mercenaries, assuming that they were in the right. In the process, the tale vilified the followers of Bushido as treacherous, dishonest, boorish, prideful and of dangerously flexible honor. And he'd watched Isawa's face twist in a sort of confused approval-disgust as each Bushido-correct action was twisted into a thing to be ashamed of, but she listened without interrupting.

She stayed silent for a long moment after he'd finished. During the tale, he'd finished filling in the black wolf's head and had switched to red thread to fill in the circle around it. He did not look up from his work to see her reaction to his tale. It was probably disgust honestly, but she'd asked why he was adding the wolf's head to his kimono, in addition to his own black dragon.

She surprised him though, when she finally spoke. "Yohei-sama represents the highest ideals of those ronin who would never choose to rejoin a proper family and Clan. Thou will wear his mon beside thine own to declare that thou also will hold to these values now that thou have found yourself tossed upon the waves."

"Yes," he answered simply.

"But thou did not choose this path yourself." He shook his head. "And despite that thou will follow Yohei-sama's example and forgo any offer of joining a family or Clan." It wasn't a question, so Theodore didn't answer. Isawa looked thoughtful. "I do not wish to offend in any manner, but that contradiction makes me curious. How did thou become ronin, Kurita-san?"

"I died," the answer was as flat and borderline hostile as when he'd admitted the same to Junichiro. He could have lied. To these people around him, this wasn't an afterlife but their living existence, but why should he? He was lying about enough to conceal that which their archaic version of the language didn't even have words for. At least in this one thing he could be honest about how much he wasn't one of them.

She finally, for the first time since intruding on his private spot in the garden, looked directly and focused on him with an intensity that was a bit unnerving. "Of course thou did."

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tbc…