Title: Talons III

Setting: AU

Characters: Kenshin, Kaoru

Type: series 3/?

Genre: urban fantasy

Word Count: 1,322

Kaoru pulled her still-damp hair into a ponytail, and made a face at herself in the locker-room mirror. She was pale and there were shadows under her eyes. To her own gaze, she looked stressed.

Unsurprising, all things considered. Five weeks ago, she had saved a Legend from a group of six poachers, and that Legend had turned out to be a dragon… a creature that nobody had thought real. And then that dragon had turned out to have the ability to shapeshift into human form.

It was madness. She almost could have convinced herself it had all been a dream, because Kenshin had vanished from the Watchhouse at some point while she slept, but… There had been a neatly folded blanket and pair of sweatpants on the Watchhouse's couch, and bloody bandages in the trashcan.

She didn't think dreams bled. Or cleaned up after themselves, for that matter.

But the kicker was that she hadn't reported the incident to her superiors. Or, well, she had, but she'd lied like a rug about it. A shapeshifting dragon called Kenshin became a normal, perfectly acceptable jormungand. She hadn't brought the Legend back to the Watch Station for first aid, instead she'd offered and rendered aid to the Legend in the forest. She certainly hadn't chatted with the Legend, or fed it tea. And she certainly hadn't lent it a pair of sweatpants, that would be silly; jormungandarnir didn't have the ability to shapeshift into naked human men mother-of-god how could she keep this secret?

How could she not?

Kaoru felt the now-familiar bubble of panic rise in her throat. This was too big, too… too unbelievable. She'd go insane, trying to keep this all inside. How could she possibly go about life as normal, knowing that dragons existed? Let alone knowing that it was entirely possible that the woman she'd passed on the street, or the man standing behind her in line at the grocery store, was one, shapeshifted?

But… Well, who'd believe her if she said she'd seen a dragon? She had no proof, and it sounded crazy, really. And, if the existence of dragons did come out, it would cause a huge stir in both the Wardens and the poachers. People would start looking for dragons, either for good or ill. Weren't they safer for being secret?

Were they even so much of a secret? The only reason she'd met a dragon was because poachers had been hunting one.

But did they know what they'd been hunting? Did they think he was a dragon, or were they simply operating on 'it's a Legend, kill it and sell its parts'? Hard to say.

Kaoru gave a heart-felt groan and pressed her hands over her face. She wished it had all been a dream. That would be so much easier.

Shapeshifting dragons. Damn. What was next, werewolves?

Kaoru froze. 'Oh god, please not werewolves…'

She gulped. 'No, no, okay, there's no way there could be werewolves, right? I mean, some one would've noticed… But isn't that what you said about dragons? Augh. Wait. Wait, did he ever actually say he was a dragon?'

Kaoru thought a moment, running through everything Kenshin had said. It was all crystal clear in her mind—she'd probably remember the incident in perfect detail for the rest of her life.

A dragon always has fangs, no matter what his shape.

"Shit," Kaoru sighed. There went the hope that he was some other shapeshifting or illusionist Legend. He'd… Well, wait, no, he hadn't called himself a dragon, really. He'd said the word, yes, but Kaoru had just assumed he'd meant that he was a dragon.

Legends didn't lie, but that didn't mean they couldn't misdirect you. Some of them lived for such tricks.

So, what else could he be? The two shapes Kaoru had seen had been something that looked like a dragon, and a human…

She could think of a few possibilities, but she'd need to do some research to be sure.

Panic now tamped down in favor of determination, Kaoru shouldered her duffle bag and stalked toward the Wardens' Headquarter's library.

Books were spread across every available surface of Kaoru's (admittedly small) living room. A rainbow of Post-it notes festooned their pages, marking passages of interest. She'd pulled a dozen books from the Wardens' library, but she'd also gone to the public library and checked out several mythology books that discussed dragons.

Kenshin's appearance was most similar to Eastern dragons, but he had some abilities that weren't attributed to them. It was still possible that he wasn't a dragon. Tanuki could shapeshift into anything, as could a kelpie.

Kaoru sprawled in the middle of the floor, desultorily eating a bowl of cereal.

Twenty books and eleven days later, she'd realized that all of her options sucked. Even the Eastern-origin dragons, which were generally considered the 'nicer' dragons, had a long and storied past of killing humans. Kelpie were just as lethal, and even more so if they knew your name (dammit). And tanuki! Most people were aware of the benign traits of tanuki—silly, gullible, big… bellies. But tanuki had also haunted and possessed humans, in the past. They could act an awful lot like kitsune, actually.

Dropping her spoon into her empty bowl, Kaoru sighed and stretched out on the floor, face-down in the carpet. Her cat padded over to search for any leftover milk. Kaoru put her hand over the top of the bowl. "Mmphh, no. Not for kitties."

The tabby's name was actually 'Smaug', because Kaoru had thought it cutely ironic at the time. He'd been a scrawny kitten with delusions of grandeur. He'd actually grown into the name, but Kaoru was seriously regretting the choice now. Effing dragons…

Smaug gave her his squeaky, disproportional meow and butted her hand with his head. She scratched him gently between the ears and on his cheeks. He began purring. Kaoru sat up and cuddled him to her. He braced his front paws on her shoulder and pressed his body against her cheek, tail flipping into her eyes. She spat out a bit of fur, but let him smoosh himself against her as his purr ratcheted up several levels.

To some degree, she was probably over-reacting. There was no telling whether Kenshin was actually a dragon, or something else. And in the end, would it matter? The chances that she'd see him again were minimal. Even if he was a kelpie, and even if he did know her name, he hadn't acted on either of those pieces of information. He could have easily used her name to bewitch her into following him into a river where he could drown and eat her, but he hadn't, and it was highly unlikely he'd go through the trouble of tracking her down to get another chance.

No, she'd probably never see him again.

Kaoru let Smaug jump down to the floor, and then started cleaning up the book-explosion that had taken over the room. She'd done her best, and narrowed the possibilities down to three—but she was going to accept the inevitable and recognize that she'd never find out the truth. She was just going to put all of this behind her, shake it off, and stop letting it twist her up inside. She was washing her hands of the whole—

Her doorbell rang.

Kaoru's heart leapt into her throat and she dropped a stack of books onto the floor.

No. It couldn't be. No way.

There were thousands of other people that were more likely to be at her door.

Maybe she should pretend to not be home?

Bad idea. What if it was something important? Someone from the Headquarters. Maybe Misao'd gotten stuck downtown again without busfare. Yahiko'd gotten in another fight and needed patching up.

There was nothing for it.

Kaoru opened the door.

Kenshin smiled brightly at her, eyes gleaming like gemstones. "Kaoru-dono."

'Goddammit.'