Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ Rescue Remix ❯ chapter5 + epilogue ( Chapter 5 )

5.

 

The crow men guarded him closely where he lay on a wide, flat rock in the middle of the ocean. They stood around him in such large numbers that he could barely see the wide open water between their bony, scaly legs. When he tried to look, resting his cheek against the rock, he could only make out a calm expanse of water with fog drifting close to the surface. Small waves lapped restlessly at the rock but there was very little wind. He laid there like that for awhile, maybe for days, staring at the water and watching the crow men as they shuffled from foot to foot, ruffling a few tattered feathers, but otherwise remaining still.

 

Eventually, when nothing changed and he wondered whether he should be bored or not, he tried to sit up, rolling onto his side, to lever himself up. Abruptly the silence broke with the distinct 'clack' of wood against rock, and he looked down to see a bloody arrow sticking straight out of his middle, right through the red haori she'd made for him. He sat up anyway, despite the awkwardness of the arrow, propping himself up on his hands, locking his elbows because his arms felt a little wobbly. Along with the arrow, he noticed something else, a sun-dark hand resting on his hip. He looked to his right to see Fuu in her peasant clothes, curled up around the wound in her belly and looking at him with bleary, confused eyes.

 

“S'alright,” he muttered, voice gravelly from disuse. “I been here lotsa times.” The sound of his voice broke the silence for good and she seemed to come awake a bit, nodding and shifting over onto her back. Beside her, Jin lay flat, arrow sticking straight up, one arm bent behind his head as a pillow. He stared up at the sky and his pale skin shone dully in the salty moist air.

 

“This is new for me,” he said quietly, eyes sliding sideways to to meet Mugen's and then away again. Mugen nodded and counted the crow men standing around them watching from the shadows of their feather hoods.

 

"No one's ever been here with me before. And these guys...” He lifted his chin at the bird men. “...are usually busy takin' me somewhere.” He tried to get to his knees because it was strange having them stand over him like that when he knew he could move, but as soon as his ass left the ground, the rock seemed to tilt sideways, threatening to dump them all in the water, and so he sat down quickly, looking to both Fuu and Jin to see if they'd noticed. They were looking at each other and not him.

 

“I think they're watching out for us,” Fuu said, watching Jin watching her. It looked like they'd just noticed the other was there and their eyes were seeking out every detail.“They're keeping us safe while we wait.”

 

Mugen scratched his belly. The wound itched more than it hurt. “Wait for what.” Despite the situation, despite his familiarity with the bird men, it seemed like a reasonable question. This was new, having them here with him. He didn't know what was going to happen.

 

“To go to our next lives, of course. We're dead; what else would we be doing?” Her head lolled to the side to look at him, and the stained dirty shirt she wore, torn and red just below her ribs, did seem to indicate that she spoke the truth.

 

Mugen ran his fingers just the slightest distance from the arrow shaft, not really wanting to touch it. “Why would we still have these if we were dead?”

 

“And would we be aware of our deaths if we were really dead? Would we remember them?” Jin asked. He rubbed at a bloody hole in his sleeve, a skinned elbow from when he'd fallen, the only clumsy thing he'd ever done since Mugen had known him.

 

Fuu propped herself up on one arm. “So, what, you're saying you don't think we're dead? Look at us; we've got holes in us.”

 

Mugen shook his head. “Dunno. Feels more like waiting.”

 

“Yeah. to go on to our next life,” she insisted.

 

They didn't reply to that and continued to wait. Fuu continued to talk, just as she'd done when they traveled together. She talked and they knew they weren't obligated to participate.

 

“I hope we meet each other again, when we're old enough to know how important it is,” she said, laying back down and experimentally stretching her arms over her head. “I hope we can go on another journey together, maybe on the mainland, or maybe even across the ocean. Maybe that's where we'll be from. Maybe I'll be from Britain.” The word sounded strange in her mouth. “And Jin, you'll be from Egypt and Mugen, maybe you'll come from the New World, and we'll all meet up by chance in a tea shop in London. Wouldn't that be fun? Except maybe,” and now her grin got huge, “maybe I won't be the waitress. I'll be a boy and Jin and I will cause all sorts of trouble for you, Mugen. We'll wreck the shop and maybe it'll inspire you to go on an adventure, and we'll travel with you across the ocean to where you came from.” She laughed to herself, the arrow jumping in her gut. She put her hand on Jin's arm. “And if you're both girls, you'll be the ones worrying about finding husbands and learning to cook traditional meals. You'd have to take care of the children, and I would be the one to ask for your hand in marriage.” She giggled. “And I would ask, because I would know as soon as we three met that we were supposed to be together.”

 

“Who would you choose to be your first wife?” Jin asked, mouth flattened in a smirk. Mugen couldn't help but smirk along with him. The crow men didn't react.

 

“Oh, I'd choose you, Jin, no question.”

 

Jin laughed, and Mugen snorted his indignation. “Hey! What? Why would I be the second wife?”

 

Fuu grinned up at him. “Don't be silly. You would make a horrible first wife. She has the most responsibility; she has to host guests; she has to dress well and be polite and-”

 

“Yeah, fuck that,” he muttered, finally working up the courage to touch the wound in his middle, to wrap his hand around the shaft of the arrow. When he did, he felt a strange tugging and he quickly let go.

 

She laughed again, a little hysterically and Jin leaned up onto one arm to lay his hand just below her wound, pressing her back down on the rock. “You should try to stay calm, Fuu.”

 

His solemn voice surprised her, and she sobered up quick. “Why, is something happening?” she asked, craning her head back to look up at the bird men. “Are we leaving? Should we say good bye now?” She looked back to Jin. “I'm glad we got to spend this time together. It all happened so fast when we got shot.”

 

“I don't think we're dead,” Mugen said abruptly, still looking down at his abdomen. “I think fishface is right on this one. If we were dead, we wouldn't be doin' this. We wouldn't have the time.”

 

He looked up at them, an idea sparking, and he leaned forward over Fuu before he lost his nerve, because if they really were dead, he sure as hell wasn't going the same place she was. His next life, if he got one, would surely be more miserable than this one had been.

 

He leaned over her and wrapped his hand around the arrow, and she jumped, looking pale as death. She looked up at him, trusting him implicitly.

 

“I love you both,” she said. “And I don't mind saying it now. I wish I had before. Doesn't matter now, though, does it.”

 

He shook his head, and cast a sidelong glance at Jin, seeing him grip the arrow in his middle as well. Then Mugen did something funny, because what the hell, they were probably dead anyway, leaning down to hiss her mouth like he'd seen people kiss when they really really liked each other and wanted to prove it. He waited for a silent count of three, then tugged hard, and together, they turned themselves right side out.

 

*

He knew he was waking up when he felt the sun on his eyelids. Next he registered the rhythmic jostling of cart wheels under him and the harsh press of boards under his spine. His neck and head were pillowed on something which felt very much like a lap, but that was a ridiculous notion, because the only time anyone had ever held his head in their lap, he'd been paying them to do it. He certainly didn't have money for a whore now, he was sure of it. Coming back from death, he always had empty pockets. Nevertheless, he felt bony shins supporting his neck and the fabric of a yukata stretched across folded legs under his head. Then he felt fingers on his scalp and the distinct 'scritch' of a blade in his hair and he realized he was getting a haircut. He couldn't bring himself to open his eyes quite yet, so he tried to roll onto his side so he could sit up, but a terrible pulling in his midsection kept him flat and forced him to breath through his teeth.

 

“Hey, Jin, he's awake! He woke up!” Small calloused hands touched his face, covered his eyes so that when he blinked a few times, his eyelashes touched her palms. She laughed a little and then coughed and both sounded like they hurt.

 

He felt the warmth of another body laid out next to him in the cart and his reflexes weren't awake enough to give him a jolt when fingers loosely circled his wrist for the span of no more than two heartbeats.

 

Fuu had taken her hands away and was again combing her fingers through his hair and it took an overwhelming amount of effort to lift his own arm to shade his eyes. When he finally did, he still didn't feel like opening them, figuring that if all three of them were still alive and traveling somewhere, that was all the assurance he needed that they were safe.

 

Of course that did beg the question of who was driving the cart.

 

He found out quicker than he thought was really necessary, deciding that he could have stayed right where he was with Fuu's fingers in his hair at least until the sun went down; but a sharp, familiar voice calling a greeting to him forced his eyelids right open and Fuu had to grab hold of his shoulders to keep him from sitting bolt upright, hole or no hole in his belly. He fought the urge to yell at the top of his lungs and instead managed a gritted, “What the fuck is she doing here?”

Fuu, noticeably more tense than she'd been, twisted around to look toward the front of the cart before turning back, pressing her hand over her middle. “Quiet Mugen. Yatsuha and Hankichi are helping us escape, and they're doing it under the guise of a honeymoon so don't be rude.”

 

In answer to that, a disgruntled male voice piped up, “And I might add I am really not happy about taking my honeymoon with you three. You owe Yatsuha your lives, so I don't want to hear a word.”

 

“Yeah, how's that, exactly?” Mugen snapped, craning his head back to glare at them. “Last I knew, the both of you worked for the ones tryin' to kill us. And I don't define 'escape' as headed straight for a public execution.”

 

Next to him, Jin gave a weary sigh. “Idiot. We have already been executed. Or don't you remember how you got that?” Jin pointed a finger at Mugen's middle, appearing to lack the strength even to lift his arm.

 

Mugen pulled aside the folds of a clean gray haori and looked down at his heavily bandaged abdomen.

 

“Yeah, that's right; now you're gettin' it,” Yatsuha taunted. “May not seem like it, but you're lucky we ran into Jin's partner and the archer outside the village; otherwise we might not have been able to pull off the kind of escape you three usually make when the shogunate gets involved. You're lucky we didn't have to arrest you.”

 

“Why were you there at all? How could you know we'd all be there together?” Mugen ground out, angered by his own helplessness as well as the feeling that they'd been played from the moment they'd left Kanazawa.

 

“We didn't know the three of you would be there, though we did know you were being held four days away in Kanazawa, awaiting execution. And we were there to help the Katsuki gang, obviously,” she said. “They never would have been able to claim that territory without assistance.”

 

Mugen felt Fuu tense up. “It wasn't their's to take,” she said, and Mugen hadn't heard her voice that low or that threatening since they'd fought over the last piece of food at the dinner table. “And since when does the shogunate involve itself in yakuza feuds?”

 

“It doesn't,” Hankichi snapped. “They hire us to do the job if a lucrative deal is to be made, which in this case, there was. The Katsuki are more ambitious and will be more productive with their territory than the Fujiwara were. They sent us in to kill two birds with one stone - you and the Fujiwara.”

 

Fuu was trembling now and the hand she had fisted in Mugen's haori seemed to be the only thing keeping her seated. “A lot of my friends are dead because of you! Dear friends. Good people. And for what? A good business deal?”

 

“And the deaths of three dangerous criminals,” Yatsuha said icily, and Mugen thought that dig was a little harsh, reminding Fuu of all the blame she'd placed on herself before this very latest snafu. Fuu shut her mouth and hunched further down around herself and Mugen jumped when he felt another body moving around in the cart with them, trying to climb into Fuu's lap. He glared up at the mute kid as her small bare feet stepped over him and then her weight settled on Fuu's other side.

 

“Where are they now?” Jin eventually asked. “Renshu and the archer.”

 

Yatsuha leaned on the back of her seat, resting her chin in one hand. “Renshu is headed for the mainland, I expect. He told us he'd been trying to get home to his family for awhile. Jin, he told me to tell you, 'good luck.'”

 

Jin made a noncommittal noise in reply. “There were many other things he could have told me.”

 

“Yeah, and who was that archer fuck, anyway? Guy was one creepy son of a-”

 

“He was part of my father's old security detail, I think,” Fuu spoke up.

 

Mugen gave her a flat, disbelieving look. “What?”

 

“That's my guess, anyway. Yuri told me about them when we were stuck in that cell together. She said that before the rebellion when all the Christians were scattered, he had a group of archers who protected him, who could take down a threat from any distance, without killing it. Maybe it was supposed to be merciful, but I think they did it for interrogation purposes.”

 

Mugen pressed his hand over the wound in his gut and felt a chill, salty breeze, very different from the warm summer evening air. He took his hand away and the chill was gone, but he shivered anyway.

 

“He was there before, outside the village, when I was with Renshu,” Jin mused. “He tried to shoot you then, but I was able to stop him.”

 

“He probably knew I was in trouble, and would have presented my body to the officials in Kanazawa, so they could report that I'd been killed,” she said, thoughtfully. “I'm glad you stopped him, though. I'm glad he waited until both of you came.”

 

“Are you both nuts?” Mugen asked, seriously. “I ain't glad for any a'this. That guy killed us. We were dead as dead could get, without actually staying dead.”

 

“He said they were injuries you had to want to recover from,” Yatsuha interrupted. “Your burial was very convincing. Hankichi and I were the witnesses. You three were in an abandoned root cellar until we got all the paperwork done and let my father know we were taking our honeymoon and going north.”

 

Mugen felt both Fuu and Jin shudder, and he forcefully kept his brain from picturing what they must have looked like, piled on top of each other in a hole while their fake burial took place across town.

 

“I don't know if you'll ever see him again,” Yatsuha continued, “though I think he'll stay close by, since he feels, Fuu, that you're his responsibility.”

 

“Great. I-”

 

“The fucker shot us. He's-”

 

“He did it to save us,” Jin murmured. “He killed us without killing us.”

 

“Yeah,” Fuu said, voice perking up a bit. “We're dead. That means we don't have to worry about assassins or bounty hunters or...” The prospect seemed to excite her quite a bit, and Mugen had to admit that the thought of a decent night's sleep without fearing a knife in his back sounded pretty good. Mugen thought sleep in general sounded pretty good. He was exhausted and sore and pissed and he wanted to be left alone with the only two people he trusted enough to sleep close to.

 

“So long as you stay out of Honshu, and keep a low profile, you're out of danger,” Hankichi said. “No one's looking for you anymore.”

 

“Where do you guys think you'll go now?” Yatsuha asked. “You've got lots of options.”

 

“None of your goddamn business,” Mugen grunted with his eyes closed.

 

Jin huffed a short quiet laugh. “I agree with him.”

 

Fuu's legs shifted under his head and she laughed, too.

 

 

Epilogue.

 

His geta crunched through the gravelly earth, carrying him closer to the bluff and the narrow path leading down to the shore. The wind that whipped his hair around his face was a warm ocean breeze, one of the last of the season. Before long, the windows would be closed up and sealed against the cold. He would help with that; he'd help put all their food up for the winter, he'd dry fish for them and cut wood. He would lie with them at night as the warmth in the air escaped south ahead of the chill. That little punk who still never said a word would make him give up his haori because she loved to sleep in it in the winter, leaving him no choice but to wind himself around Fuu and drag the ronin over them both. For all his frosty attitude, Jin was like a furnace when he slept, radiating enough heat to keep them warm even when the wind screamed at their house and the snow piled against their walls.

 

He would be with them nearly every minute of the day, soaking up their familiarity, replacing memories and images with the real thing - the way Fuu twisted her hair into its knot, securing it with sticks and his comb, the way Jin moved through his kata every morning, the way Fuu's skin tasted in the dip of her spine just above her ass, especially after she'd been working and sweating, how Jin's back was sexy as fuck, too, long and straight but also very bendable and smooth as the inside of a shell.

 

He would smirk and snap and bitch about the cold until he drove them crazy and his bones ached with winter, and then he would start dreaming about the south. His lungs, weakened with too much time spent nearly drowning, rattled a little and, if he stayed too long in the cold, it hurt to breathe, so after a time, after they were thoroughly reacquainted with everything they loved and hated about each other, he would leave again. Fuu would give him lots of food to take with him, even though she knew he didn't understand the concept of rationing, and she'd make sure that he took the medicine she made for his breathing. It smelled good and cleared his lungs when they got full enough to wake him up in the night, feeling like he was drowning again, so he happily used it, though in the south, he didn't need it so much.

 

Jin would travel with him for part of the journey and they would screw every night on the open road because Mugen knew about that wild part that lived in Jin, but which stayed hidden when the kid was within earshot. Once, Mugen asked Jin to travel with him beyond the point which he usually turned around, but he refused. He always turned back, walking briskly, anxious to be home with her and the kid. He wouldn't watch Jin go and he wouldn't really miss them until spring when the cold receded.

 

He would always be home by the time the fruit trees bloomed, and he would stay with them until the weather grew hot and they grated on each others' nerves again, until they couldn't sleep in a pile anymore and Chie threw his haori back at him, until the prospect of more fishing or more farming or more anything routine made his skin itch and his sword feel just too damn good in his hand.

 

Then he would go out to sea to make their money because they still never fucking had any and thank god Fuu never got knocked up because they wouldn't make it if there were five of them to feed, not with Fuu's appetite. He threatened to take Chie with him in the summers and dump her over the side to lighten the burden during the winter months. She was always able to convey that she'd love to go with him, but Fuu expressly forbade it and Jin had to placate her with promises of lessons on the proper way for a girl to be badass. He would explain that piracy was not the way to go about it.

 

Then, when the intensity of the heat began to subside, and the storms began in earnest, he would find his way back to the bluff and the cycle would start over again.

 

He skidded and slid down the steep track to their house, preferring the shortcut to the longer route with the more gradual hill. He spotted Chie first, practicing with her bokken, hair tied up in a knot like a boy's. She spun on her heel and chopped at the air, releasing silent gusts of air that were supposed to be shouts. She was utterly taken with Jin and the samurai code and she didn't seem to care in the least that she had the wrong set of parts to go with the lifestyle. When Mugen had asked Fuu whether it bothered her that their kid wanted to be a boy, she'd said, “She doesn't want to be a boy; she wants to be a samurai. I did, too when I was twelve, but mostly because I wanted to get good enough to fight the other boys and cut their nuts off when they harassed Mom and me.” Mugen had swallowed noisily and dropped the subject.

 

As Chie saw him approaching, he motioned for her to stay where she was when she made to drop the practice sword and run towards him. Putting his finger to his lips, even though he knew she never made a sound, he rounded the corner of the house to see Fuu up to her elbows in dirt, digging up the season's harvest. Like he did twice a year, every year, he checked to see what was different about her, and satisfied that she was basically the same - longer hair, different shirt - he stepped out of his geta and stalked toward her, sprinting the last few steps and plucking her off her feet, making a break for the beach and the ocean.

 

She shrieked and then laughed and clung to him as he ran and tripped across the rocky shore, plunging them both into the water before he fell. This side of the bluff was protected from wind and waves and so the water was deep and clear under them as he tread in place and held her the way he liked to best - her legs wrapped around him, hanging on his hip with arms around his neck. He grabbed her ass with one hand and steadied them in the water with the other, grinning skyward as she laughed and nuzzled his neck, one hand sliding all over him under water, checking him over.

 

“You're back,” she said against his skin, just before she bit him.

 

“I'm back.”

 

Her legs tightened around his hips. “Did you miss us?”

 

The hand on her ass slid toward the front of her, rubbing blunt pressure until she shuddered discretely against him. “Some parts more than others,” he murmured in her ear. The cold water was doing nothing to keep him from showing her just how excited he was to see her. “Jin here?” he asked into her ear.

 

She shook her head and the way she was rubbing against his thigh made him seriously wonder why he'd stayed away for so many months. “He's in town; he'll be home soon.”

 

“You two try anything interesting while I was gone?”

 

Fuu swiped shaggy dark hair that had gotten long again out of his eyes and grinned, then froze, sticking her nose closer to the side of his head. She ran her fingers over the soft hair just over his ears up to his temples, then she did it again. “What is it?” he mumbled, butting his forehead against hers like a cat.

 

“You're an old man, Mugen,” she laughed. “You're going gray here and here,” she said, touching his temples. “How old are you again?”

 

He shrugged. “Never kept track.”

 

“Come on,” she said, dropping her legs from around his waist and swimming for shore. “I'll make you something to eat.” He liked the Fuu who greeted him with kisses and a body that made him think only of getting her on her back, but he liked this Fuu, too, the one who made sure he was fed and who looked at him with big concerned eyes. Over the last few years, he'd learned to appreciate the notion that someone was thinking about him, even if he wasn't there. It made him more comfortable with the idea of calling the place he went back to 'home.'

 

When they reached the shore and wandered, dripping back into the yard, Fuu turned on him and tangled her legs with this, tripping him up and shoving him to the ground. He gave a surprised 'oomph!' and then let her straddle his legs and push up his shirt, resting her ear against his chest. “Breath,” she commanded, and obediently, he took a deep breath, feeling out what she was listening for. His lungs filled easily and felt clear. Fuu raised her head and smiled at him. “You sound good for an old man!”

 

He snorted and shoved her off. “Fuck 'old.' Let's go eat. I'm fuckin' starved.”

 

*

Jin shoved him up against the wall of their bedroom and pushed his hands up inside his clothes, fingers running along the lines of his abdomen and ribs, looking for new scars. He leaned in close and Mugen tilted his head back, baring his neck to Jin's teeth and harsh breath, and every time they did this, it was a powerful rite and a reminder of how much someone like Mugen could trust another. Fuu sat on the futon watching them, and they both knew it was her favorite part, seeing Mugen lay himself open like that.

 

Mugen could practically feel her eagerness coming off her like steam when he pushed the edges of Jin's kimono apart and tugged it back, off his shoulders. Still white as the moon, but with the more solid build of a man who ate regularly, Jin no longer looked or felt like he would blow over in a storm. But he was still tall with long, smooth muscle and Mugen liked standing nose to nose and comparing their bodies - opposites and yet two sides of the same coin. He knew Fuu liked to watch that part, too.

 

The first time after he got back was always rushed and loud and a little painful and somewhat uncomfortable, knowing that there was a kid supposedly sleeping on the other side of the house. But, Mugen figured she'd already been traumatized by enough violence and death in her early years to be scarred by the sound of three people noisily having sex. He never worried about it enough to keep quiet.

 

His ass throbbed fuzzily at the periphery and his arm was falling asleep under Fuu's head, but shit, it felt good to be smushed between two people - even if they were bony as hell and Fuu tended to snore when she fell asleep on her back.

 

Jin folded himself along Mugen's spine, sweaty and sticky and warm, and Mugen glared half-heartedly over his shoulder. “We're already sticking together.”

 

Jin, on the verge of sleep, regarded him with heavy-lidded dark eyes, smiling faintly. “We'd like to travel with you this winter.”

 

On his other side, Fuu rolled over onto her stomach, tucking her arms under her and turning her head so it fit under his chin. He flexed his tingling fingers and then pillowed his head on his reclaimed arm. “I hope that's okay with you,” she murmured. “We want to get out on the road again. Sounds like fun doesn't it?”

 

Mugen smiled as he fell asleep.