Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ Rescue Remix ❯ Chapter 3

3.

 

I.

 

“Hey, speed it up, your highness,” he hissed over his shoulder, “unless you really did like our last accommodations.”

 

Jin scowled at him as he ran, and didn't speed up. Mugen, in the interest of remaining as quiet as possible, cursed under his breath and turned to face forward so as not to smack into an oncoming tree. He stretched out his stride and sucked in a great breath of clear air, untainted with sweat and the stink of human shit. He smelled the ocean. The feel of his sword across his back, slapping gently against his spine was fantastic. Right then, he felt like he could run forever. Or, if the mood struck him, and if Jin hadn't insisted they attempt to escape without drawing attention to themselves, he could have charged back the way they'd come and taken on every soldier he'd spared on his way into town two days previous. He'd been so nice then. He was done with nice.

 

“South!” Jin called, voice pinched like always. “Go south, Mugen.” He slid to a halt, geta kicking up a spray of dirt and leaves. He squinted skyward and then sniffed the air like a dog, realizing he'd turned inland a bit. Adjusting his course to parallel the ocean, he took off again with renewed energy. Two days in that cell had been plenty. He was fucking hungry as hell and sleep deprived, and that combination, instead of making him sluggish and sick, left his senses tuned to every nearby motion and sound. By reflex, he filed them into two categories - food or enemy. All his life, these had been the only two categories that mattered.

 

From the look and sound of it, he and Jin had made a clean break from the guard house. He vaulted over a fallen tree and then listened as, a few seconds later, Jin followed at a slightly slower pace. He heard no other footsteps, though they were doubtless being pursued. He gave a mental shrug, and with another glance at the sun, calculated that, at most they had another hour of daylight. When the sun set, he and Jin would be nearly impossible to track. They'd disappear like tengu in a-

 

He heard the sharp 'crack' of a dead limb breaking and whipped around in time to see Jin stumble and catch himself against a tree. Mugen froze in his tracks and straightened, watching Jin struggle to regain his breath and his footing. The heel of his other palm was pressed against his temple and his eyes were narrowed in a look of intense concentration, as though he were willing his body to do something it really didn't want to do. Mugen felt something squirm unpleasantly in his gut. “You hit?” he called, gaze darting from one tree to the next looking for the shooter and then back to Jin, looking for the injury. He felt in his bones that there was neither. His gut felt a little worse when Jin shook his head and then grimaced, going from pale to downright sickly. Narrow shoulders shuddered beneath worn gray fabric and he hunched forward abruptly, arm wrapped around his middle. “You sick?”

 

Jin made a strange hissing sound, and Mugen sniffed the air again, realizing what was going on, irritated that he hadn't picked up on it earlier. The smell of the guard house cells had just about killed his nose, the dim light dulling his eyesight. Starving people smelled like drought and rust.

 

“You didn't look sick in the guard house.”

 

Jin turned away as he straightened, and Mugen took an automatic step toward him. He could barely hear Jin's response. “I didn't have to sprint for extended distances in my cell,” he said through clenched teeth. His words held the distinct bite of humiliation, and if they weren't currently on the run from several dozen soldiers who were in deep shit with the shogunate for letting them escape, Mugen would have taken the time to rub Jin's face in his obvious weakness. But in fact, they didn't have time to be standing around even for these brief seconds.

 

“Yeah, well are ya done yet? We need to get a lot more distance between us and them by dark.”

 

Jin, having apparently composed himself sufficiently, turned back around and stepped away from the tree, tucking a bit of hair behind his ear and checking the daisho at his waist. “I can go further, though we should find fresh water and something mild to eat before we stop for the night.” He came shoulder to shoulder with Mugen, eyes intent on where his feet were going. Mugen watched him and counted down in his head. Jin's back was rigid to match his purposeful steps, but the eyes that watched the ground were glazed and distant, most likely looking down the long dark tunnel that directly preceded a black out.

 

Five. Four. “Yeah?” Three.

 

“We should sleep tonight and head for the mountains in the morning. We don't have any time to...” Two. One.

 

Then, composed as ever, Jin's knees buckled and he folded to the ground like a piece of clean laundry. Even dirty and half dead with hunger and exhaustion, he still fell like a noble. Mugen watched him drop and didn't move even after it was clear he was unconscious, regarding with a stony stare the white cheek and jaw turned toward him. His hair had fallen across his eyes and after a few more seconds of waiting, Mugen squatted down onto his heels and shoved some of it aside with his grubby, large-knuckled fingers. Jin's breath was shallow and pained, sharp features pinched with the hunger cramps in his belly. They weren't getting anywhere with him like this. And they didn't have time to dick around. They were trapped between the need to get away from the Kanazawa guard house and the need to get up into the mountains, and Mugen hated feeling like he had no choice in what he did. Staying with Jin meant that whichever way he moved, an elbow or a bony hip would bump up against another problem, like he was stuck in a root cellar, smelling wasabi and getting earth down the back of his shirt. If he ran right now, if he rejected the options he had with Jin and ran, maybe he could get a boat and go south along the coast without attracting too many eyes, find a pirate crew and head for the mainland. This part of the world had gotten too dangerous for even his taste. Or... not dangerous. He could take whatever dipshit bounty hunters or government types came at him - though the scars on his body may have said otherwise. It was more the relentlessness of it, the constant feeling that his end - and the two others' in the same place as him - was moving closer faster than it should, faster than it had any right to. And for the last year-and-a-half of his life, he'd felt it without anyone to watch his back, to keep their eyes open while he slept.

 

He looked down at the ronin at his feet and followed the familiar lines of his body, remembering what it felt had like to wrap his hand around the knob of his elbow, to grab him and shove him, to feel the solid weight of him pressing him into the ground. He could call all of it up like it'd happened last week. It was at the front of his brain, right behind his eyeballs, in his nose, and on his tongue. It was vivid and in his hands right now.

 

And he hated that he'd missed it.

 

He grabbed the sleeve of Jin's kimono and shoved him over onto his back, releasing the sleeve and then fisting his hand in the material over his heart. He shook him once, Jin's head snapping forward and then thumping back against the ground with a quiet thud as Mugen bared his teeth in a snarl. Jin came to quickly, blinking up at him and sucking in a soft breath, eyes still glazed and unfocused.

 

Mugen glared at him. “Fuckin' pussy. You're honestly tellin' me you can't outrun a few fat guards from a fat town? What's your fuckin' problem? They make you their bitch or somethin'?”

 

Jin's gaze abruptly sharpened. “Moron,” he grunted, taking a steadying breath and seeming to come back to himself. He pushed himself up onto one elbow and looked down at the hand Mugen still had in his clothes. “If you hadn't taken so long to start looking, we would not be in this situation.”

 

Mugen's brow dipped further down into its scowl. “If you hadn't decided it was a smart idea to wait for me in jail, we wouldn't be in this situation.”

 

“If you hadn't disappeared without leaving a way for me to track you, we wouldn't be in-”

 

“Yeah, well, if you'd just told her that it was a stupid idea to split up in the first place, none of us would be in this situation. So, would you quit being such a little bitch and get the fuck up?”

 

Jin gave him a long, heavy stare and he felt a brief hiccup of hesitation over what he'd just said. “Not that I didn't love every fucking minute of my time away from-”

 

“Be quiet, Mugen.”

 

He snorted and shot to his feet, leaving Jin to get up on his own, which he did, dignified and stately, though definitely slower than usual. “We can't stay here, and we're not stoppin' until after dark so get movin', princess. I won't wait for you.” He turned and started walking, right arm hooked over the sword at his shoulder, nose lifted to keep track of the ocean, ears tuned to the sound of approaching footsteps. He felt Jin's presence at his back after a mew moments of silence.

 

The choice had made itself. Mugen hated to be left behind more than he hated missing what had become familiar.

 

*

Figured the moon would make the woods nearly as bright as day. Mugen barely had to watch where his feet were going. Nor did he have to strain his eyes to see the commotion up ahead in the middle of his and Jin's makeshift camp. They hadn't built a fire and they hadn't made beds for themselves, but not every soldier was a complete fucking moron and certainly some of them had to have decent tracking skills, so it wasn't a terrible surprise that they'd been found - especially not when they'd had to stop just after sunset. Jin wasn't going a step further until he had something other than nothing in his gut and Mugen was feeling a little spacey himself. First day on the run and the third day without more than a couple mouthfuls of rice and he wasn't at his best anymore either.

 

Wide-eyed old farmers - and their wives - were the best remedy for that for a couple reasons, none of which were important at the moment. Suffice it to say that Mugen now had a haori full of generously donated fruits, vegetables, dried fish, dumplings, and jugs of water. Well, he'd eaten all the dumplings as a service fee for bringing Jin his dinner like a fucking woman, but he couldn't honestly get too worked up about it, because he wasn't hungry anymore, and being not-hungry was usually enough to boot Mugen right out of whatever foul mood he'd been in.

 

And now, as an after-dinner snack, he got to kick some more guardhouse ass. Not a bad end to an otherwise shitty day, all things considered. He rolled the last dumpling stick between his teeth and carefully lowered the loaded-down hoari to the ground, stepping out of his geta to keep his footsteps quiet. The clash of Jin's katana and the roiling mob of guards bunched around him was enough to jump-start his pulse, though not out of worry for his friend's safety. It was pretty amazing what the body could do with a good shot of adrenalin, and even worn down after weeks of near starvation, Jin could take care of himself, given the right reason. The need to save his own skin and the smell of body temperature blood on his blade had surely done the trick.

 

Didn't mean he got to have all the fun, though. Mugen looked up into the branches of the eerily lit forest, tracing out a root to their camp that would drop him right into the thick of the action, making full use of the element of surprise. Then he started to climb, long toes and rough feet gripping the trunk of the tree and propelling him up, hands reaching for the next branch without any pauses to rest. His feet were narrow with high arches, but with his toes spread wide and his long-fingered hands to steady him, he darted along the branches from one tree to the next like he'd grown up doing it, like he'd planned out ambushes like this since he was old enough to wield a weapon.

 

He clung to the branch with one hand, the other resting on the hilt of his sword, feet gripping the trunk of the tree, bracing him at an angle from which he could see everyone laid out below him. He dangled their like a monkey, taking stock of Jin's situation and feeling his mouth tighten into a familiar smirk. There were very few times when he'd had the chance to just watch Jin fight. Usually he was otherwise occupied in the same fight, or too busy squaring off again Jin himself to get a really good look. When he and Fuu had first picked up on the fact that Jin had a serious history, when he'd faced that first guy claiming to be out for blood for Mariya's death - that was when Mugen really got to watch as, even hungover as hell, Jin ran circles around that poor fuck. Or, well, he hadn't even needed to run circles. The sound of his sandals sliding through the dust as he dodged, the way his chin tilted sharply to the side when he avoided a strike, the way his fucking hair had been like a black silk banner behind him - Mugen shivered a little at the memory. He'd watched that short fight and wanted so badly to jump in and make the bastard really work for it, that the first chance he'd gotten afterwards, he'd gone off by himself with all the sounds and images fresh in his head, and jerked off, leaning one hand against a tree, eyes closed, ears deaf to anything that could distract him and make him lose the image of what Jin could really be like.

 

This fight was not like that fight, though the numbers were much worse and the opportunity for Jin to be fucking amazing with that sword even greater. Jin was sweating - he could see it when his face was turned up to the moonlight - but not the healthy glowing kind, the kind that dampened Fuu's neck when she'd worked in her dead father's garden. This was the cold, pale, ugly kind of sweat, the kind that indicated exhaustion and illness. His eyes were glassy and dark in the shadows made by brow and cheek bone. Mugen watched as one of the soldiers darted forward with a shout - more to psyche himself up than from real courage - and Jin swayed on his feet for the length of a blink before the tip of his sword came up and then slashed sideways across the guard's middle. For Mugen, suspended in the trees above him, a blink was a very long time. Jin's blade snagged in the man's gut, jerking him to a stop and leaving his back wide open. The dumpling stick snapped between Mugen's teeth, but then his mouth relaxed into a grin as Jin, looking slightly irritated at the effort, drew his short sword and twisted around to shove it between the ribs of the man coming at him from behind. For those few seconds, the folds of Jin's clothing tightened where they were gather at his waist and Mugen saw the long outline of hip, abdomen and ribcage, and his whole body flushed hot with that same burning need to fall right into the middle of it. His temperature ratcheted up another degree when Jin jerked both blades free and pivoted on his right heal, keeping his weight low, swinging his daisho in a short whistling arc.

 

Mugen felt a jolt of vague recognition and strangeness all at once. Jin had just made short work of two more men with that little bit of improvisation. And that was when Mugen realized what was going on. Jin was barely awake, fighting more by instinct than conscious thought and movement. Mugen knew this because he recognized the way Jin moved. He saw himself in the loose, nearly boneless way that Jin avoided the guards' attacks. Normally, everything he did was textbook, deliberate and purposeful. He never just reacted. Watching him now, Mugen was pretty sure 'reacting' was all he could manage.

 

A man charged at him, screaming his head off, trying to be brave, and Jin took a lazy step back, grabbing hold of the man's sleeve as he stumbled past and shoving him to the ground, letting the man's momentum pull Jin down over him, katana already buried in his back. He pulled the blade free and whirled to block a heavy blow, body bending down under the weight of it. Mugen let out a huff of air as he then twisted his blade and himself to the side, barely escaping as the sword bit into the earth where he had just been. Mugen liked to see him bend that way. He'd never considered Jin to be a particularly flexible fighter and he could have watched this uncharacteristic looseness for as long as Jin could keep it up, if only for the newness of it, to see that long body making itself into Mugen-like shapes.

 

But then there were three of them all bearing down on him and Mugen saw him drop to one knee, heard the sound of a pained breath escaping his lungs and he let his feet slip from the trunk. Hanging from the branch by one hand, he glared down at the top of Jin's bent head for another second before letting himself drop.

 

He drew his sword just before he hit and only Jin was quick enough to look up, recognize him and throw himself backwards out of the way as Mugen landed, bare feet and one hand slapping the earth with a dull thud. He straightened in time to see Jin roll to his feet and thrust his sword up and into one of the few remaining guards with all the precision and perfection one would expect from a master of the Mujuu style. Mugen felt a brief twinge of disappointment that he'd returned to himself, even though, by the look of him, that strike had been the last he would make.

 

But Mugen couldn't afford to watch him sway on his feet, so he turned to the remaining two guards and bared his teeth in an ugly grin. “Fun's over boys,” he snarled before tearing into them.

 

They didn't last long, and they weren't very much fun to kill, but they marked the end of the force sent to pursue them, so he crowed their victory with a sharp “Hah!” and pinned the last guard like a stuck bug to the ground. His gut still tight with unspent energy, he whirled to find Jin sitting on the ground, leaning his forehead against the hilt of his sword. Mugen was in front of him in two strides. He swatted the sword out of Jin's hand and knelt down in front of him, grinning at Jin's dazed and distantly irritated expression.

 

“What're you-”

 

Then he slung one arm around the back of his neck and jerked him up to his knees, fitting the other arm around his waist and bringing their bodies together in one sharp motion. He kissed Jin's cold mouth and tasted exhaustion and hunger, shoved his tongue between Jin's lips and ran it over sharp teeth and the roof of his mouth. Already hard, he thrust twice against Jin's hips and then sucked in a surprised breath when he found himself flat on the ground, Jin leaning over him, both arms braced on either side to keep him upright. Mugen dimly noticed that his elbows looked a little wobbly. His breath came short and fast.

 

“Food, first. This, later,” Jin rasped.

 

Mugen conceded the validity of that logic and rolled away to go find his haori, fingers buzzing, head spinning.

 

II.

 

When he was a little boy, maybe ten or eleven, he had the power to jump whatever height or length he chose. His legs were like a cricket's when he jumped. He could get to the very top of a tree and perch in its skinny branches like he weighed nothing. He could make it across a valley to the highest peak on the island in only a few leaps. His power gave him absolute freedom in a place where very few had it and everyone craved it.

 

When he traveled across the island, he had to be very careful where he landed because if he wasn't watching, he sometimes ended up in the middle of something ugly - fields and ravines full of bodies who wanted to do what he did, who wanted his freedom. They clutched at his legs and his clothes and tried to keep him from jumping, from leaping away from them.

 

When this happened, he usually managed to free himself because his legs were not ordinary legs. They were demon's legs, given to him by the king of the Crickets when he'd just learned to walk. Usually, even when he landed in a bad spot, no one could hold him back because no one could take away the special power he had, power that was in his blood and in his young, strong bones.

 

There were times, though, when even his demon legs couldn't help him to escape. On those times, his sister, a red wolf named Mei, came to pull him out of their clutches. Her sharp teeth closed on the back of his shirt and pulled him free and then they ran faster than any human could hope to match. She let him ride on her back and her dark red fur smelled like the sun. They didn't ever speak to each other, and after he was safe, she always disappeared again, up onto the mountain, but they were kin, so he felt her presence on the island, no matter where she was. He felt it when the clutching, grasping hands that threatened them finally cornered her and drove her into the sea.

 

For a long time after that, he was utterly alone, because even though his father still lived on the island, they were not kin, and he wanted no help from the man who was just like all the rest. After the wolf was gone, he became stronger because he had to. He jumped higher and farther than he ever had before because he only had himself to rely upon. No one could touch him after that. He no longer considered himself human, and he was content, though alone. He was fierce and wild with the strength of a demon and many feared him.

 

Then one day, he met another person with a demon inside her. Her name was Kohza and she said that her arms turned to wings when she ran and leaped to take flight. She said that she'd been able to do this since she was little, when the young princess of the Bats had given up her wings just before she died from an injury. The girl said that the Mountain Bats were fighting a war with a tribe from the Shore caves, and they were losing. The bat princess had asked the girl to lead her people in her place and the girl said that she would. She'd been in many battles and had lead the bats from the Mountain caves to victory. But then her older brother had found out what she could do, and he grew mad with jealousy. He captured her when she slept and put something heavy in her that kept her from flying. He didn't even need to hold her down. She ran and jumped and spread her arms and fell every time.

 

Because Mugen was strong and because Kohza was kin, he picked her up and leaped high up onto the mountain. They lived there together for some time, trying to figure out what her brother had done to make her heavy so that she could not leave the ground. He asked her whether her brother would come after her still, and she said, no, that she felt safe with him.

 

But she lied. She could do nothing to outwit her older brother. Her demon arms were no match for Mukuro's hate. Mugen had never seen anything like the darkness that seethed inside Mukuro's chest. At first, Mugen could avoid him. Mukuro didn't have a demon in him and Mugen could escape. He took Kohza with him because she was terrified and young. And she was kin, and he'd never forgotten what it felt like to have kin.

 

But Mukuro was ruthless and he was jealous of the strength they possessed. He wanted it for his own, but more than that, he wanted to use it to hold power over others. He tried to get Mugen to join him, to share his strength, to take back all that had been taken from them as children. But Mugen had no interest in controlling others. And he didn't particularly want to share. Kohza and Mugen had their demon strength - Mukuro had nothing but anger. He wanted others to suffer for the life he'd had to lead, and Mugen could not escape that kind of hatred because it had no boundaries.

 

One day, Mukuro followed Kohza when she went to where Mugen was hiding out, and that day marked the end of his flight. Mukuro caught him and held him down. He put something heavy and hateful into him so that he was paralyzed, and he lay there in the forest for days, unable to move. When he finally picked himself up and tried to use his demon legs to escape from the island, away from Kohza and Mukuro, he leaped from the rocks and he fell. He tried again, and his body remembered what it was supposed to do, but his spirit did not. He suddenly understood why Kohza couldn't fly anymore. No matter how strong his legs were, his spirit was heavy.

 

He tried and tried anyway, until his knees and palms were bloody from falling. The last time that he tried and fell, he sliced his hand on something sharp and shiny. Sucking on his bleeding fingers, he found he'd fallen on a sword, still clutched in the fingers of the dead man on the road. He wrenched the blade from the corpse's hand and held its strange weight in his own. It felt foreign and heavy. Holding something like this would surely never allow him to use his demon legs again. But when he was about to put it down and walk away, he heard a noise behind him and turned to see a gang of kids approaching. Several of them he recognized as having tried to catch him before Mukuro took his demon legs. They would surely be able to catch him now that he was human again.

 

The sword was too big for him, but he liked the way it looked - long and straight, with two fangs on either side of the hilt to protect his hand when he fought. He held the blade and watched the boys drawing near and the fear that made his chest tight turned to something darker. He didn't want to run from them - he wanted them to feel what he felt when Mukuro took from him the only thing he'd been sure no one could ever take.

 

He took the sword and made it his, and he killed every one of the boys in the gang, even when they ran away from him. He'd lost his demon legs and he felt their absence like a missing lung, so he made his own demon. He forged it into the blade in his hand. He carried it on his back along his spine, and he wasn't afraid of losing this one. This demon would always be with him because, even if his blade shattered, it was made of betrayal and hate and loss and a demon made of those things never went away. Mukuro was a jealous fool who had ruined Mugen once, but in the end, he'd only made himself a more dangerous enemy, because no matter how many people he ruined, he couldn't do what Mugen could do.

 

Mugen cleaned his blade in the grass and walked away, feet firmly on the ground. He was alone again, but ties of kinship were no longer something he missed or sought.

 

He opened his eyes and sucked in a soft breath, his chest heavy with images and sensations he hadn't experienced in years. His fingers clenched where they rested on the ground, and he squeezed dirt and pine needles into his fists. He reached back to feel for his sword under his head and someone grabbed his wrist before he could get it; but, body still heavy with sleep, he didn't draw his tonto fast enough to slice open Jin's throat when he leaned over him.

 

“Mugen, you were dreaming. And making lots of noise.”

 

He blinked, wide-eyed, up at his friend, utterly disoriented. Jin stared right back at him, face as familiar as Kohza's or Mukuro's. The sun was coming up, the light reflecting in his dark eyes. He swallowed and turned his head to the side, finding Jin's daisho where they rested against a tree. “That's what it is about you,” he muttered.

 

“What?” Jin's brow drew down in confusion.

 

“And her,” he said. “She's got one, too, in her...” he rested his hand on his belly. “How else could she eat so much?”

 

“Mugen, what are you talking about?”

 

He met Jin's eyes again. “Did you make yours?”

 

Jin regarded him with a sober gaze. “You mean my daisho.”

 

Mugen nodded, the back of his head rolling against the comfortable hardness of his scabbard. “And what's in'em.”

 

Jin's mouth pressed into a thin line and his gaze hardened. “I did.”

 

Mugen grinned and reached up to pull him down into a rough kiss as they fell deep into the earth where all old, unchanging things eventually found their way. He closed his eyes.

 

And threw himself upright, wide awake, the hilt of his sword in one hand, the other firmly on the ground, confirming that he was not in fact falling, that he wasn't trapped underground, and that Jin wasn't on top of him. He tried to regain breath that someone had stolen while he was asleep, and in the nearly absolute dark of the forest, he sought his traveling companion's familiar sleeping shape, finding him at the base of a tree, wide awake and watching him. Mugen got to his knees and slid across the short distance between them where they had essentially fallen from exhaustion a few hours before. He knelt before him for a moment and then Jin rose to meet him, examining his face in the dark before firmly pushing on his hips, bending him back over his heels. He went willingly, sliding his legs out from under him so that he could sit and then straighten out beneath Jin as he wrapped one arm around his ribs and pulled their bodies together. The dream faded completely when his back lay flat and Jin's arm slid from his ribs to his hip and then his thigh muscle, grabbing and holding on tight enough to leave five finger-shaped bruises. They shared several breaths, foreheads pressed together, as Jin gave a slow, hard push against Mugen's groin. He grunted into Jin's mouth just before they kissed, fingers of one hand seeking out the gap in Jin's hakama, the other clamped around his upper arm.

 

“I'll let you fuck me,” he said.

 

Jin gave a sharp, quiet laugh against his lips. “How generous.”

 

“Better say 'yes' before I change my mind.”

 

Jin's mouth left his and shifted down, his nose bumping Mugen's jaw upward. He bared his neck, squirming against the earth when Jin bit and licked at his collar bone.

 

“Define 'fuck,'” Jin said against Mugen's pulse.

 

“Fuck,” he groaned after another insistent push on his crotch. “It means you put your dick in my ass and move it around. F-U-C-K. Fuck.”

 

He heard a distinct hitch of breath, and the sound of Jin's voice catching on what could only be called a moan about killed him. “I don't think that would be appropriate,” he said after a moment, voice a bit more frayed than usual. “Though congratulations on retaining your spelling lessons.”

 

He laughed in spite of himself. “Fuck off.”

 

“It is such a versatile word.”

 

He laughed again and then abruptly stilled when he felt Jin's hand in his cut-off hakama.

 

“Does this count?” Jin asked, and Mugen pushed helplessly up into the hand that had closed around him.

 

“Close enough,” he grunted.