A/N: Everyone has some kind of inspiration, right? Whether they realize it or not, everything has an underlying theme, something that speaks to them and tells them how their art is supposed to go, be it a painting, or a novel, or, in this case, a fanfic. My inspiration for this was something I call people watching.

It's fun; take some friends, a lunch, add an airport and a little creativity, and you can people-watch. As people walked by the PDX airport, my sister, her friend, and I were making up their life's histories, putting in random facts like "that man there hates brownies because his grandmother used to make them, and she died before she could pass on the secret brownie recipe". Stupid stuff. But I saw this guy with a long red braid, and I thought: "that looks like Kenshin, a 2003-version Kenshin!"

I hate AU's, but here I am jabbing at writing one -_-;

It's a little dark, a little helter-skelter, a little grasping, but I hope you like it.

I hope it's not your usual AU.

* DANCING PLUMS: FIRST ARC

~First Acquaintance~

Dancing Plums and 8th Grade Literature: First Acquaintance

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE COOKIES.

AND IT WAS GOOD.

THEN, GOD CREATED A CERTAIN BLUE-EYED WOMAN TO BAKE THE HOLY COOKIES.

AND IT WAS NOT SO GOOD.

Chapter One: Kaoru's Cookies and the Shiftless Ronin

*

Night life was night life, no matter what the city.

When the sun set, the partiers and weirdoes seemed to seep up from the cracks and crevices of the town like bugs from an old log; the music would start and there'd be drinking and dancing and sex and drugs.

That was just they way it was.

Some of the wild ones were born that way: exotic, rebellious, or just too beautiful to not be on stage, catching eyes and melting them. Some of the wild ones were not truly wild: twitchy business men aching for a floating world of freedom, abused women abusing back, or girls with broken dreams and old illusions. Some of them, though, were just normal people trying to forget what day looked like. What rejection tasted like. What humiliation burned like.

The hunched, tired young man, second from the last row to the stage, fit into this last group of wild ones. He sipped his drink with the petite politeness of a man that didn't drink often, or a man that drank only tea. His eyes scanned the dimly lit, color-screaming room like he was trying to remember it, so that he could forget it and the rest of the world when dawn came, bright and harsh.

A young, flirtatious, dark-haired waitress tried catching his attention- although it looked like the immaculately kept, much-worn clothes that the man wore were his only ones. Still, the waitress had a sick grandfather, two do-nothing aunts, and an uncle to take care of back home; she was ravenously hungry for tips of any size.

"You need anything else?" she asked the man cheerfully, helpfully, but the man didn't seem to hear her. His drink was frozen in one hand, his thread- bare white shirt and shredded-knee jeans hanging loose on his hunched form as he stared up at the stage, transfixed. His tree-hugger-sandals scuffed as he tapped one foot to the non-existent beat of the blaring music. The waitress's patience was notoriously short-she huffed and left the strange, no-penny-to-spare man with his thoughts and the music.

The man tried to drink, tried to see, tried to forget the glamorous dancers that swirled and spun at the edge of his vision, but he couldn't and so he sat. Alone.

A bigger man with shoe-polish hair and a grossly colorful shirt talked to him, asked him to dance, asked him his name. The man shook his head.

"My name is Ken," he said. "And I don't dance with other men."

Shoe-polish hair looked surprised; he had thought that this Ken with the sandals and worn clothes was a woman---Ken's long, red, braided hair spoke of a feminine air, as did his youthful face, but his eyes were sharp as glass stepped on with bare feet and twice as painful. Child-innocent, tilty, indigo eyes that held pain and were pain. Shoe-polish man stalked away, finding a cute blonde.

Ken watched three hermaphrodites that clustered by one table; they moved to the music like drooping trees flinging their white-branch arms to the wind-- -exotic, painted, sweaty flowers. His eyes roved on, seeing everything but actually registering little.

He thought he could smell something above the smoke and the alcohol: something delicate as perfume, crushable as a blossom.

White plum blossoms.

Ken looked up, but she was not there.

The dancer with the long legs, whipping, sensually dark hair, and calm, mysterious eyes of a color he had never really placed was not there.

She was dead, he told himself.

Plum was dead.

Ken finished the drink and made as if to go home, to the new apartment he had found---but as a jobless 'ronin', who knew how long this apartment would last.

Who knew how long it would be until he was out under the cold, unforgiving stars again---the stars that were like those mysterious eyes that had condoned murder.

The waitress from earlier watched him go, recognized his expression of loss, and wanted to follow him. Wanted to find out more about him. But, she rationalized as she turned, black braid swinging behind her, what would her boyfriend, Crow, say if she was out following some weird old guy?

Crow would probably leave her.

Again.

She shoved the tip Ken had left at his table in her pocket---it wasn't much, but it would be breakfast tomorrow when she ran from work to start her morning classes.

The waitress decided she was much too young---only sixteen, after all---to have all this weight and responsibility on her shoulders, but she was the leader of her family.

It was just something she accepted.

*

Kaoru Kamiya, the eighth-grade Literature teacher of Kenjo Middle School, screamed curses as she beat the flames from her batch of double-chocolate cookies.

"Oh, PLEASE..." Kaoru muttered, viciously scrubbing the melted-tar- consistency cookies from their death-grip on the cooking sheet. At least, they *had* been double-chocolate cookies before their brief encounter with oven-induced hell and fiery death. Now they smoldered grumpily, obviously taunting her over her lack of culinary skills.

And she had wanted them to be *perfect*.

Kaoru had worked (virtually) all afternoon, slaving (almost) over the (quite nearly) terribly hot stove, working with (practically) all her effort to create what promised (initially) to be wonderful cookies. The reason of this occasion was such: a new neighbor had moved into the apartment adjacent to her own---a quiet, red-haired girl who seemed to be about Kaoru's age, if not a little younger. Kaoru had seen her doing laundry at the Laundromat two days prior; the red-head didn't talk to anyone, but did have a neat proficiency for whistling while she worked.

Kaoru sniffled. And she had wanted to make such a good, homey greeting by impressing this new neighbor with cookies.

But the kitchen, as usual, had revolted terribly.

Oh well, Kaoru decided. I'm sure they're at least half-way edible...

*

Ken had just slipped into the warm coma of sleep when there was a knock at his door; he ignored it for a bit, thinking it probably was either a dealer that had dug up his name coming for a payment, or maybe one of Plum's old friends, coming to chew him out for being such a terrible person.

He wanted to deal with neither.

So Ken closed his eyes against the banging at the door, relaxing in the familiarly musty smell of the room, and the lavender incense he had lit earlier---lavender, for protection and purification.

God only knew how much his soul needed purifying.

The pounding continued; Ken decided his intruder must have knuckles of steel.

With a sigh, he tossed off his blanket and trudged shirtless to the door, his weary body protesting at the movement. Maybe the sight of his lean chest, scarred in some places from past cat-fights with people dirty enough to carry hidden weapons would turn off any violence this 'visitor' might have in their system. Ken was able to muster up a little fierceness---just and case---and opened the door roughly to imply a first point.

It wasn't anyone he could remember ever seeing.

Ken knew this because he would have remembered the girl's striking blue eyes---blue as the sky, blue as the ocean, blue as forever, blue as anything any poet had used to metaphorically describe that endless shade of blue---eyes that were slightly startled. The girl nervously brushed a curl of black hair from her pale face, staring at him, her hands tightening their hold on the plastic-wrapped bundle she was holding. A peace offering? He almost laughed.

"You're a guy," said the girl, almost disbelievingly.

"Yeah," said Ken, again almost urged to humor. She squinted.

"You have a nipple ring," said the girl, this time almost shocked.

"Yeah. And you have a dress on that matches your eyes nicely. You have a name to go with that?"

She paused. Looked as if she was thinking about whether or not to say something.

"Kaoru Kamiya," said blue-eyes finally, accompanying the introduction with a warm little school-girl smile. "I'm your neighbor next door over. I brought you, um, cookies." Ken tried to coax his face into smiling back, and it did so, forcefully.

"Nice to meet you---I'm Ken McEwen. You want to come in, Miss Kaoru? I was just making tea."

Kaoru nodded and followed the shirtless, polite redhead back inside the cramped, lavender-scented apartment, clutching the cookie platter to her chest like a small shield. Not that Ken scared her. He acted too coolly familiar to be scary, but her surprise to find him a him and not a her was undeniable. It left her feeling slighted, and a bit like an idiot.

The apartment was strikingly clean for belonging to a man, the white-washed walls bare as could be, the brown-and-tan carpeted floor freshly vacuumed, the Japanese-style futon-bed unrolled on the floor next to the surfboard- converted coffee table. A clashing wool blanket with some random anime-type character printed on it---a morose-looking girl trudging through a blizzard of blue snow---laid thrown-over the sleeping-mat. It looked as if he had just gotten up.

Kaoru watched this Ken person---she still blushed at the thought that she had mistaken his sex when he was very much a man (and a terribly cute one at that)---as he busied himself in the tiny kitchen-type-space, steeping what smelled wonderfully like mint tea. Ken moved very quickly and surely, and the long, snake-rope of his shockingly red hair swayed with his movements, a living thing in its own odd right. He had pulled on a tattered, used-to-be-white t-shirt as if he sensed her embarrassment and shock, smiling as he handed her a steaming, chipped mug of mint tea.

"So, Mr. McEwen, what do you do for a living?" Kaoru asked as a bit of small chat, something she was notoriously bad at. It seemed, though, that Ken was even worse at it. They would have drank their tea in silence had she not broken it.

"You can call me Ken, Miss Kaoru. I used to be a martial arts instructor," said Ken, shrugging. "But it's been tough, lately. The old dojo my partner, Hiko, and I owned was burned in arson fire a couple years back. I've been a jack-of-all-trades since then." He looked slightly sorrowful. "Not that this jack can find a trade, as of late."

"Oh," said Kaoru, and then "Oh," again. "I'm sorry."

"And what do you do, Miss Kaoru?" He pressed with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm a...." And now she was faintly self-conscious---here he was a *martial artist* and she was just the teacher of impressionable, snot-nosed youths... "Teacher. An English literature teacher." Ken shrugged again; his long braid slid from being looped on his shoulder to conform to his spine's gentle curve. It was silky and snaky---an almost blasé controlled movement, very much befitting an artist.

Kaoru suddenly felt very clunky in her wrinkled yellow t-shirt that hadn't been washed properly in three days; she was very aware of her calloused hands that twined in her lap, her little toes that curled embarrassedly in her sandals.

Again, Ken seemed to sense that a change of pace was needed; he grinned faintly and freed a 'cookie' from its cellophane prison. Kaoru was about to say that they weren't really, uh, *cookies*, although they had been that for a precious few moments in a past life. Now they were better fit as drink coasters, or something equally edible.

"You shouldn't---" she began, but was too late.

Ken took a large bite out of it---Kaoru decided he must have very strong teeth to even get that far. His eyes widened---she had yet to decide if these said eyes were simply cobalt blue or a strange and exotic tinged violet---and he obviously attempted to swallow. Which looked as if he was attempting futilely to swallow a chunk of twisted metal. Ken's eyes watered, and he blinked rapidly.

"It's...a very good *try*," he croaked, and Kaoru beamed. "But we'll have to work on your cookies, I'm afraid."

"We?"

"Yeah. We are neighbors, right? And cooking is quite a neighborly thing, isn't it?"

She thought then, with this odd new stranger trying to smile politely at her, that maybe it was cool that they were nearly living together.

Ken was definitely something else entirely from any other guy she had dated- --not that they were dating, or anything. Not that a guy like this ever would date her.

Kaoru quickly finished her tea, thanked Ken for his hospitality, and went back home to sit on her bed with Kitty-chan, her cat, drinking diet shakes and feeling generally depressed.

*

Kaoru was quite nearly late for school the next day.

The night before, her radio had attempted to play a sappy, angst-filled romantic tune at her---she had attacked the radio with her hairbrush, not even about to think about the romantic things she loathed. The hairbrush had had a sure victory; the love-song had sputtered and died like a lit paper airplane.

Which wasn't cool, considering that the radio also served as her alarm.

And so, the broken remnants of the radio had refused to go off on alarm the next morning, and hence, she was late.

The class refused to shut up about it all morning.

"Ms. Kamiya," Tsubame, one of the younger, shyer girls cheered when she had banged open the classroom door, huffing from running straight from the bus terminal. "Everyone is acting badly."

Now, when Kaoru had signed up as a teacher, she had thought she would get several desk rows of smiling, cherubic teenagers, ready and willing to sweep the cobwebs from their minds and cram them full of supposedly useful knowledge.

Yeah, right. Ha, ha, ha.

It was a small zoo.

Kaoru hastily handed Tsubame her coat and stormed to the front of the classroom, ducking to avoid low-flying paper airplanes.

"Now class, I'm sorry I am late, but...*class*. Are you listening to me? CHILDREN!" Kaoru roared, clenching her fists and really belting the word out. Twenty-four pairs of wide, shocked eyes were quite suddenly trained on her; one shocked student had the misfortune of having a goopy spit-wad that had been clinging to the ceiling suddenly fall squarely on his head. He hardly noticed---the fuming teacher was occupying most of his attention.

"Good morning, Ms. Kamiya," the children chorused automatically. They had the sudden look in their eyes as deer do, right as they are caught in the terrible glance of headlights.

"In your seats! NOW!"

There was much scrambling as the twenty-five adolescents tore their way to their designated seats, complete silence reigning in the room as they stared stiffly at Kaoru. One seat, belonging to the desk in back, peppered in the most pencil-graffiti, was empty.

She sighed.

"Where *is* Yahiko?" she asked, and twenty-five hands raised immeadiately to snitch on their missing number.

"Tsubame, what did he do this time?" Kaoru asked the 'teacher's pet' tiredly, and the little brunette looked perfectly pleased to tell her:

"Yahiko tried to burn the school down again, Ms. Kamiya. Mr. Sagara yelled a lot, picked him up, and took him to the principal's office."

Again, Kaoru sighed; she had that nasty little feeling that today would be long and telling, indeed.

"Right. Everyone, get out the Odyssey---open to page 103, where the heading says 'Book IX'. Tera, could you start us off reading the second paragraph? It starts off with 'This is indeed'."

"'This is indeed as fair a sight as a man can see. Now, however, since you are inclined to ask the story of my sorrows, and rekindle my own sad memories in respect of them, I do not know how to begin, nor yet how to continue and conclude my tale, for the hand of heaven has been laid heavily upon me...."

And Kaoru thought: 'What kind of heavenly hand is laying on Ken McEwen, to make those eyes of his so dark? What is the story of *his* sorrows?'

*

The music pounded, loud and encompassing and so thick she didn't have to think. Kaoru was still wet from the shower---her white-rose skin was slick and her hair hung heavily down her back like a thick black cape. Snaky tendrils of her hair smacked her face as she spun, dancing. She swung her arms wildly to the beat, surrendering herself to this wild music that sang stories to her, not caring if the whole world saw her.

"Something woke me uuuuup, from the midst ooooof dreaming fantasies---" Kaoru crooned along with the music, her voice lacking the deep, sexy tone of the male singer, but her energy brought the underlying words to life: I feel so alive. "Halfway there! And he always fills my cuuup, oh, he lifts me up, yeah, how he lifts me uuuup!"

Kaoru spun, her arms whirling around her in a white pinwheel, singing, feeling light as air, no, lighter---the next school day was two days away. It was Friday. God bless you, Friday. The tattered old t-shirt she wore over her wet body was big and stuck to her, whirling out like a foofy skirt at her movements. She closed her eyes, reveling in this moment of freedom, where she could forget about bills, and homework, and her boy-friend-less life, and just *everything*.

Kaoru didn't hear the polite knock at the door, the voice that peeked in curiously and said "hello? Anyone there?" and walked in though the unlocked door.

She smelled something sharp and sweet and tantalizingly close; something that overrode the hanging smell of the jasmine-herb shampoo that she had used on her hair.

Lavender. Beautifully bitter, fresh, smoky lavender.

Kaoru looked up to see him standing at the doorway, a slightly shocked, halfway embarrassed look on his face. His indigo eyes were wide.

The music took a sudden drop in pitch and force; the singer just barely whispered the chorus of:

"goodbye, goodbye...

Walk away, it's time to say goodbye...

Never took the time,

To stop and realize,

Death takes many forms,

Even while alive."

"I---I'm sorry," Ken muttered, his face rapidly vying his hair in a contest of redness. "I, uh, I knocked, and, uh, the door was open...I came for the cooking lessons?"

At first, Kaoru was irrationally pleased that a guy---especially this guy--- was blushing and stuttering upon finding her wet and half-nude.

But then, conscience kicked in.

"PERVERT!" She screeched, much to the surprised chagrin of a certain red- head.

Blushing scarlet with a mixture of anger and mollification, Kaoru shoved this stammering intruder through the closest doorway, suddenly glad to be rid of him, though also wishing she hadn't been so hasty.

She sighed, sitting on the ground outside the door, wet hair hanging in her face.

"Ah, Miss Kaoru? Why did you lock me into your closet?"

Oh. Shoot.

Kaoru debated hitting her head on the sink to concuss herself, so as not to have to deal with the man she had unwittingly locked in with her shoes and skirts.

She heard a sneeze, and a weak cry of "Dustbunnies..."

'Why me, God? Did I run over a cart-load of nuns in my last life? I must have done *something* to deserve this..'

*

Imbrium: Hmm. We have our dear former kendo-instructor, now a Literature teacher (?), our friendly Rurouni (before anyone tells me I messed up on his name, hear me out: there IS a story behind that that will be explained later!) who seems to have been leading a bit of a seedy life, and, well, this is going to be interesting. Any Megatokyo fans out there? Cookies will be thrown to whoever can spot the Megatokyo reference I threw in this chapter for kicks!

Chapters to Come: Ken gets a job, and an interesting one at that. We meet a foxy school nurse, an emotionally disturbed teenager who likes to light things (^_^), a lanky P.E. teacher, the waitress is named, and more on Odysseus and the dancer named Plum.