Disclaimer: As much as I wish to the contrary, RurouKen ain't mine. It's property of Watsuki-sama and a menagerie of various corporations to which I do not belong. Used without permission. No profit is being made.

Based mostly off of the manga, with a couple references to the OVA and a popular bit of fanon that I believe Conspirator-sama popularized. If you recognize it, you get a cookie.

She Who Fights Monsters
by misaoshiru

It was well after midnight. Yukishiro Tomoe couldn't sleep.

She sat up in her borrowed futon, pushing aside the too-familiar sheets, and stood, coming to gaze out the window. Her reluctant roommate was out again, bloodying his hands in the obscene tradition they had grown accustomed to.

Why? And, more importantly, why did she care?

By all accounts, all was going according to plan. While Himura Kenshin was still awkward in her presence and made every effort to get her to agree to leave, he was already more comfortable around her than with the other serving girls and even his fellow men. It shouldn't, then, be a difficult matter to learn his weakness and make her escape, leaving his fate to the Yaminobu.

But...

There was always a "but." There was one thing she hadn't counted on.

She knew, already, the fatal flaw in her plan.

Tomoe heard a splash from the distant washroom and moved almost by instinct. She knew what she would see, but her heart always sank a little nonetheless.

The assassin's hands moved mechanically, scrubbing nearly hard enough to tear at the skin. Blood mixed with water, tinting the basin's contents a grotesque shade of pink. And still he scrubbed, real blood giving way to demonic figments of imagination that could never, would never fully fade away. He was so engrossed in the futile cleansing that he didn't acknowledge her as she discreetly watched; it was rare that he did, though she was there most nights.

The fatal flaw was this: she had assumed, before even meeting him, that she could hate the Hitokiri Battousai and be more than willing to lead him to his death, whatever the cost. It had seemed a fair assumption to make at the time. He had killed her fiancé. He was a murderer who must be stopped for the sake of the nation and, more tangibly, to prevent other stories like hers. But...

If only she'd realized there always was a "but."

She couldn't hate the sad-eyed young man who screamed and wailed and even sometimes wept in the midst of nightmares likely more terrifying than she could ever imagine. She couldn't hate the awkward teenage boy who could behead a man with ease and yet could never come up with the right words to say around the opposite gender. She couldn't hate the boy who smiled a simple smile when he was playing with his top and thought no one was looking...a smile that never quite reached his eyes.

She couldn't hate the monster who killed her fiancé.

Gods. Was she a monster, too?