Archive of Our Own

Ten minutes after Jin parted ways with Mugen and Fuu, he felt content. Perhaps their journey had ended in a way none of them had foreseen, but in spite of that it had ended well; better than it had begun, in fact. Each of them had found something they'd been craving from long before they'd met, be it love, friendship, or closure - whether they'd initially been aware of those cravings or not. Considering that he and Mugen had never counted on getting anything out of the trip at all, they certainly couldn't complain. Now there was nothing holding them back anymore, or holding them together; they could all go their separate ways, pick up their lives where they'd left off.

Ten hours after Jin parted ways with Mugen and Fuu, he felt he'd made the greatest mistake in his life.

-----

It had started hitting him much sooner than that, really, although at first he'd tried to brush it away like a fly. Silence, around those two, had been a precious and all-too-rare commodity; if one wasn't running off at the mouth, the other was, if they weren't yelling at each other in concert. Jin having a few moments alone with his thoughts had usually been reserved for when they were asleep, or if they split up temporarily in whatever town they'd found themselves at.

So, after a few solid hours of peace on the road, with only his own footsteps to break the quiet, it had started to feel truly...foreign. No longer comfortable, like a rare treat, but unnatural. Every minute became a reminder that they weren't there, that they were miles away and the distance was only growing.

It was...unpleasant. But Jin supposed it was only to be expected, when one had been traveling with others for so long; he would have to readjust his expectations, his habits, get comfortable with solitude again. (It would occur to him, later, that he'd never been comfortable with solitude, that he'd been searching for something more than that ever since he'd left the Mujishin Kenjutsu dojo...but at the time he'd still been rationalizing, trying to convince himself that everything was fine.)

He'd turned his mind to meditation, in order to turn it away from Mugen and Fuu and their absence. It had been easy enough at first - but he discovered the same problem presented itself, albeit in a new way. He found himself rousing from his mental exercises in confusion and surprise, wondering why one of them hadn't said something, hadn't interrupted him by now, where they'd gone - and then the memory would come back, belated. The expectation of them being there was stronger than the awareness that they weren't anymore.

Eventually he'd given up on driving them from his mind, accepting it as a sort of growing pain; nothing but time would relieve it. But it felt somehow ominous, like distant thunder heralding a storm.

-----

It wasn't until he stopped at an inn for the night that the storm broke.

They'd split up the money that the brothers and Kariya had been carrying. Only one of the brothers had died in such a way that they'd been able to loot the body, of course, and he hadn't been carrying much. Kariya, however, had been a distinct windfall. Whether he had simply been a rich man or his travels following them had been well-funded by the shogunate, he'd had enough that even split three ways, it would be a few weeks before Jin would have to worry about money. (Mugen, no doubt, would be broke within two days, if not sooner - a prediction Jin had openly made before they'd parted.) So he had no need to ask for charity, or work, and simply ordered himself a conservative bowl of soup.

A few moments later, he noticed the innkeeper looking at him strangely - and Jin realized he'd paused automatically, waiting for companions he no longer had to place their own orders. As he stirred himself, pulling out the man's payment, he had the metaphorical sensation of smelling ozone in the air as he at last recognized what was coming.

Afterwards he made his sleeping arrangements - something Fuu had done while they'd traveled, because it had been decided early on that she would be in charge of the money(largely to keep them from running, back at the beginning when that was more of a concern, but also because she was more responsible than Mugen and Jin couldn't be bothered). It was when he heard himself ask for a single room that the lightning finally traced its neon arc across his mind, harshly illuminating the landscape of where he now stood.

Jin found himself lying on the futon presumably some minutes later, though he couldn't remember preparing for sleep at all. He stared at the ceiling, and finally confronted what he'd been running from all day.

I'm alone.

Not that this was news to him, exactly. Jin had known since they split up that he was alone, despite those occasional moments of forgetfulness where he kept thinking the company he'd spent months building his life around was still part of his life. And he'd known, from even before they'd parted, that he was going to be alone when they left.

What he'd been denying, or stubbornly ignoring, was the fact that he didn't want to be alone. Not anymore. Fuu and Mugen had given him more than that, more than he'd ever had, and their departure had left him even more empty than he'd once been. They'd created niches for themselves within him, and their absences had left holes. And if he'd initially thought that was acceptable, that it wouldn't bother him - or, more accurately, that he could handle it even if he wasn't necessarily happy with it - then he'd been mistaken.

So he stared at the ceiling and asked himself the question he'd asked Fuu weeks ago, just before they'd reached Ikitsuki Island - a question that perhaps he should have been asking himself, as well. Once our journey is over, what will you do?

Of course, the situation had changed since then, and so the question he needed to ask had to change as well. So...now that their journey was over, what could he do?

-----

He didn't sleep; his mind was too caught up in thoughts of how to address the mistake he'd finally accepted that he'd made. And the first conclusion he came to, quickly but painfully, was that when it came to Fuu, there wasn't anything that could be done. Or, more to the point, should be done.

He loved her; so did Mugen, perhaps even more fiercely than Jin in his own twisted way. Even to himself, Jin couldn't say whether his own feelings for Fuu were more romantic or familial; it was enough for him to recognize the feelings existed without questioning the source. And, truthfully, it didn't matter. Whether as lovers or family, neither he nor Mugen had any sort of life to offer her - not one she could enjoy, or truly accept. Jin had always known this, and suspected that in his own primitive way, Mugen sensed it too - that where Jin had held back based on good judgment, Mugen had likewise held back on the guidance of the animal instinct that informed most of his actions. Jin and Mugen had lived, and would continue to live, much the way they'd traveled together - always moving, on the edge of bankruptcy and starvation half the time, regularly getting tangled up in fights. They'd each chosen that lifestyle for themselves, one way or another, long before they'd ever met Fuu. But as for Fuu...she'd endured it well, had even enjoyed it for what it was(despite the regular complaints), but she had never intended for it to be her permanent way of life. It had always been a means to an end, the path she'd had to take to reach the samurai who smelled of sunflowers - and to Jin, Fuu's journey to find her father had seemed a transition for her, something she had to do before she could get on with her life. And now that she'd found him, along with the closure she'd been aching for...she could get on with the rest of her life, could decide for herself what to do with it. And Jin knew full well that however she would decide to live, it wouldn't be as they did. That whatever she chose, it wasn't likely to be a life either he or Mugen would be fit for.

Jin was and would always be proud of her - quietly, fiercely proud. Perhaps all the more so because she had walked away in the end - that despite her affection for them, she hadn't been willing to settle for their way of life to stay with them when she knew she could do better. In spite of his fears for her, and because of his love for her...he knew that wherever she walked now, she had to walk alone. She wanted something beyond anything he could offer, beyond anything he could even claim to want, and she deserved to find it. And, as she'd suspected (albeit prematurely) when she'd gone to Ikitsuki Island alone...she needed to find it by herself. His own loneliness - to say nothing of the dangers he represented; he knew his master's former students were likely still hunting him - had no business intruding upon the life she was making now, potentially twisting the shape it would take even as she forged it.

And so his thoughts turned, with slow inevitability, to Mugen.

-----

There was, at least, no concern of disrupting the path of Mugen's life if Jin were to seek out his company again; the opposite was far more likely to be true. Mugen was disruption incarnate; he reshaped others' lives to suit himself, with a blade if the sheer force of his personality wasn't enough. That Jin could come to want to inflict that upon himself, could miss it...he'd never have conceived of it, back when they'd first met at the teahouse.

But the uncomfortable question that had to be asked with Mugen was whether he would want, or even tolerate, Jin's company again - especially without Fuu or their desire to fight each other to hold them together. Fuu was gone, and so was their rivalry...to an extent, at least. They would always consider each other rivals in their own minds, that much Jin knew - each grudgingly regarding the other as an equal worthy of respect and the very best they had to offer in combat. But the desire to kill each other that had kept them in close quarters, to actively pursue that rivalry, was gone, which truthfully left them in an odd position - Jin himself wasn't sure how he felt about having a man just as skilled in swordsmanship as himself, yet his polar opposite in every other way that mattered, constantly on-hand as a reminder of where his ideals and combat prowess had fallen short. It had been one thing when they'd been planning on fighting to the death, when there had been a definite plan to resolve those feelings and the question of whose life philosophy was superior - but it was something else entirely to live with it, to look the fact that their lives could have taken drastically different paths in the face each morning. Only the gods knew how Mugen would react to such confused emotions, if even Jin couldn't make logical sense of them.

And there was one other fact to be confronted - Mugen had never been as attached as Fuu, or even Jin, to their group. He'd been the one most ready and willing to cut and run, to do things on his own without any thought to them, to walk away from them in general. And though he had stayed, had come back on those occasions they'd split up...Jin doubted it had been for anything that he personally still possessed to appeal to Mugen with. For Fuu, he'd stayed; for their rivalry, he'd stayed. For Jin's personal companionship? Highly unlikely. Acknowledging he no longer wanted to kill Jin had, perhaps, been the closest Mugen knew how to come to a gesture of friendship...but it could just as easily have been Mugen's way of saying that he had no reason to hang around Jin anymore. Certainly the man had walked away without looking back.

Of course, so had Jin, at the time. But try as he might, Jin couldn't picture Mugen tossing and turning on whatever futon he was lying on tonight, feeling at the edges of a hole in himself he didn't understand and thinking of Jin - Jin couldn't picture him doing that even in regards to Fuu, who likely had far more of the man's affection. What Jin could picture, all too readily, was the idiot getting drunk and hitting on every vaguely attractive woman in sight in whatever watering hole he'd found for himself to wallow in, maybe getting in fights with their husbands when his objects of attraction were particularly unwise choices. Or perhaps stumbling into a brothel, if he'd found a town big enough to accommodate one, a lecherous grin on his face...and Jin found himself smirking, almost involuntarily, at the mental image and how vivid it was.

Still...the fact remained that Mugen wasn't likely to realize it even if he did miss them. He wasn't one for introspection, and generally didn't even give himself time in which introspection could occur; he was always too busy indulging himself with whatever form of action he could find. Perhaps Mugen would feel the occasional twinge when alone, or when falling asleep, not even understanding what it was he felt...and then he'd just take out his inexplicable bad mood on someone unsuspecting, until the day such twinges faded naturally into forgetfulness and the chaos that for Mugen could be called routine.

Rather than being pleased to see Jin again if the man showed up out of nowhere, there was a better than even chance that Mugen would be pissed - he might not want Jin cramping his style again once he'd finally been able to let loose. A better than even chance that he wouldn't want Jin there, and certainly wouldn't be willing to travel with him again. In fact, the odds were good that Mugen wouldn't have even one twinge of loneliness over them, and Jin believing he might was just wishful thinking. Jin's own feelings of loss would almost certainly be lost on Mugen - the feeling that Jin had found what he'd searched for all this time, then been asked to give it up again. Mugen wasn't likely to even sit still long enough for Jin to express that sentiment in plain speech.

The odds of Mugen not just telling him to get lost, assuming Jin managed to catch up to him at all, were -

Virtually zero.

As the phrase came to him, so did his master's voice, which surprised him. His last lesson. Jin had no trouble placing it; his master's entire speech had been etched into his memory. But he wasn't quite certain what relevance it had to him at the moment. The last time he'd recalled it - when it had been more than relevant, it had been required - was when facing down Kariya, his toughest opponent, the man he had no hope of victory against...

The whisper in his mind seemed, somehow, loud.

...except that's not true, is it?

Jin had thought it was true at the time, of course; he'd had no reason not to. But in retrospect, it didn't hold water. He had defeated Kariya, in the end. As infinitely skilled and brilliant as the Hand of the Gods had been, he had fallen to Jin's blade. The man who was actually Jin's toughest opponent, who he'd actually never defeated, was someone else entirely. Someone against whom he truly had no hope of victory...partly because killing him would still feel like losing.

All Jin truly knew was the sword, and all Jin knew of the sword he'd learned from his master. It was difficult to say if his final lesson had ever been meant to hold a deeper truth than simple technique, had ever been meant to address dealing with a man who was neither attacking Jin nor whom Jin intended to kill...but Jin had to work with the tools and knowledge he had. And so he turned the final lesson over in his mind, considering how - if at all - it could help him, how it could be applied to Mugen.

You leave an opening in your defense, which allows him to strike. When that happens, it creates a brief opening for you...

Jin found that his eyes had closed only when they flew open. He couldn't have been lying there for more than an hour, but even that felt too long - and too quiet, without Mugen's open-mouthed snoring. He rose and dressed in silence, leaving so quietly that the innkeeper later used the tale of Jin's disappearance in the night as proof the inn had been visited by a samurai's ghost.

-----

Two days of hard, fast travel on very little sleep and almost no food was all it took to catch up to Mugen - who, in line with Jin's predictions, had been living it up, eating and drinking heavily and sleeping late. Finding him had been simplicity itself - a straight line from where they'd parted, as direct as only Mugen could be. Jin stopped only once along the way to check Mugen's course, which was also easy; he found a rather irate innkeeper who was more than happy to point the way, expressing the fervent hope Jin was planning to arrest or kill the bastard who'd 'kicked a guy straight through my wall!'.

Jin had simply smiled to himself and continued on.

By nightfall on the second day, he'd reached the next stop for travelers - it appeared to be some sort of bar. He knew Mugen was inside, without even having to go in, when someone - he guessed a petty thug, from the dress - came stumbling out, sputtering in terror as he tried to gain traction with wooden sandals on dirt that had been pounded flat. It was such a familiar scene that Jin found himself smiling again at the sight.

Such nostalgia, over such idiotic things...he'd never have believed it possible.

Mugen himself nearly ran Jin down a moment later, the idiot charging out in mid-bellow and full stride, clearly in pursuit of the man who'd run away. It was a testament to Mugen's reflexes that he stopped himself just short of ramming into Jin, particularly since nothing less than a brick wall could stop a Mugen charge by more conventional means. And nothing less than Jin's instincts (or was it perhaps his knowledge of Mugen?) could have told him Mugen would stop before hitting him, which was why Jin held his ground when someone else would have jumped back or fallen over.

Besides, the look of utter bafflement on Mugen's face, still mixed with the lingering anger at whoever and whatever had him pissed off now, offered Jin a measure of private satisfaction. He'd have taken another sword through the gut to watch it play out.

"The fuck you doin' here?" Mugen finally groused, head cocked like a puzzled dog. "Thought you were heading the other direction. You get lost or something?"

Jin met Mugen's gaze, held it deliberately as he answered, feeling like an oyster deliberately forgoing the safety of its shell. "I came looking for you."

And he left himself open, watching the resulting play of emotions on Mugen's face, waiting for the strike that might or might not come. As it had been with Kariya, he found there was no fear - only a quiet assurance, the certainty that he was betting everything he had because what was on the line was everything that was worth having. He was almost getting used to it - these desperate, last-ditch efforts, playing these long odds. Just another all-or-nothing gamble.

I swear, I always get stuck with it.