Chapter Text
The weeks following the defeat of Khotun Khan were a blur. The biggest threat to Tsushima was gone, but there were still countless camps and farmsteads still occupied by Mongol patrols that needed to be dealt with. The invaders hadn’t let the death of their leader stop them; there was always some new general that needed to be put down, always some village to liberate. The islanders were starting slowly to return to everyday life, but the danger had not yet passed. Especially not for The Ghost.
Jin had killed Lord Shimura following their duel in Omi Village. Word of the jito’s death spread quickly and within the fortnight the Shogun sent hundreds of mainland samurai to hunt for his killer. The price on The Ghost’s head grew by the day and it was only a matter of time before it grew just large enough to tempt some of his former allies. Jin had to be even more careful of who he placed his trust in.
Yuna, however, remained his constant. She was by his side as he recovered from the injuries he sustained fighting The Khan in Port Izumi. She was the one who found him hunched over his uncle’s body in Omi Village, red-eyed, raw, and too exhausted to even cry anymore. Yuna was the one who gently led him to his horse so he could ride off before anyone realized what had happened there. She stayed with him a while at his new home too– The Dawn Refuge, he’d taken to calling it– just until he got back on his feet enough to stop needing her.
Yuna reminded him to eat. She coaxed him into sleeping. She woke him up when he slept too long. She knew how easy it was to give in to grief, and she wouldn’t let him lose himself to this. She felt cruel doing it, but there wasn’t time for him to mourn; danger lurked everywhere on the island and Jin did not have the luxury of being able to ignore it for much longer.
So Jin buried it down and moved on. He threw himself into surviving. He scouted out locations of the remaining Mongol camps and learned the insignia of the samurai sent to hunt him. He ate without being reminded to and could fall asleep on his own, although he had a hard time staying asleep. It worried Yuna, but she was glad to see that he was taking care of himself again.
They were sharing a small dinner of vegetables and watery broth one night when Jin cleared his throat to get her attention.
“Thank you, Yuna,” he said. “For taking care of me after my uncle… After the duel.”
“Someone had to,” she said. But when she saw the serious look on his face, she was sorry she had made the joke.
“It wasn’t a problem,” she continued. “I was glad to be able to help”
“You don’t need to worry about me anymore,” he continued. “You’ve done more than what you were asked to do. Tsushima owes you a great debt– I owe you a great debt. One that I can never hope to repay.”
Yuna frowned into her soup. She didn’t like where this conversation was headed.
“You’ve earned the right to start a new life for yourself,” Jin said. “And you should.”
“Are you asking me to leave, Jin?” Yuna asked tersely.
“Yes,” he said sadly. “It’s not safe to stay here. Find yourself a real home, one with a roof and sturdy walls. Go somewhere where you’ll be safe from the shogun’s men and the Mongols. There’s no reason for us both to live like this.”
The sadness in his voice as he begged her to leave broke her heart, but it also made her angry. Before she met Jin, Yuna had been a thief, living hand to mouth in places worse than the hovel he now called home. He’d forgotten that she was used to hardship and that she was more than capable of taking care of herself, even against a few samurai.
She would not leave him to be hunted down like a dog. He had treated her like an equal, had defended her in front of his uncle, and had been declared a traitor for it. He’d given her hope and a reason to keep living on after Taka died. If she left him alone and something happened to him, she wouldn’t have ever been able to forgive herself.
“I’m here because I want to be,” she said firmly. “Now stop trying to get rid of me and get some rest. There’s a fishing village near Tsutsu still under Mongol control and you need your strength if you’re going to chase them out tomorrow.”
“Yuna…”
“I don’t want to hear it, Lord Sakai,” she said, angrily grabbing his empty soup bowl from him. “Now, go to sleep.”
It took a month and a half to rid the island of the last of the Mongol stragglers. They managed it by working separately, splitting up to cover more ground. Yuna had spent enough time thieving and fighting alongside Jin that mimicking his style came easily to her. The work was quick and brutal, but it was efficient. There were no survivors, no chances to regroup, and slowly but surely their forces shrank until Jin sank his tanto in the neck of the last Mongol swordsman on the eve of the New Year.
With the invaders gone, Yuna expected Jin to let his guard down and relax. He’d spent nearly an entire year fighting them and it was running him ragged. He was thinner than he was when she first pulled him from Komoda Beach the previous summer. His handsome face was marred by sunken cheeks and dark circles beneath his eyes. He needed time to rest and recover from the stress he’d put his body through. He needed time to grieve the loss of his uncle and the loss of his clan. But he didn’t stop.
“The mainland samurai are still after me, Yuna,” he said. “I’ll be hunted until the end of my days. I don’t have time to rest.”
Try as she might, Yuna couldn’t convince him to slow down and take care of himself. She tried to keep up with him, but every day it was harder and harder. Jin noticed it too, although she tried to hide it for his sake.
“You’re making yourself sick,” he said one night as they hunched together over the crackling fire. Spring was rapidly approaching, but the last chill of winter blew through the cracks and holes in the wall of the Dawn Refuge.
“And you aren’t?” she shot back.
“That’s fair,” he acquiesced. “But the shogun’s not after your head.”
“If you tell me I should leave you one more time,” she said curtly. “I’ll deliver your head to the shogun myself.”
Despite the grim mood, Jin chuckled under his breath. It had been far too long since she’d heard the sound and Yuna felt her stomach flutter.
“Then I won’t tell you to leave,” he said. “But I still think you should.”
“And I think you’ve taken too many blows to the head to be making these sorts of decisions,” she retorted
He didn’t argue with her any further. But he was gone when she awoke the next morning. He’d left all of his armor and most of his weapons, stealing away during the night with only his horse and his tanto. When the implication of what he meant to do hit her, Yuna nearly went faint.
“You stupid, stupid bastard,” she said, her eyes stinging as she raced through the yard. She was on the lookout for anything that might give her a clue as to which direction he had gone, no matter how small.
It seemed the kami were on her side. She found Kage’s hoofprints in a patch of mud not too far from the path leading toward the Dawn Refuge. From the look of it, his gait had been steady and even; Jin hadn’t raced off toward his death and for that she was thankful. Jumping on her own horse, Yuna galloped off in the direction he’d ridden, praying to whatever god was listening that she wasn’t too late to stop him.
She found him in a bamboo forest, kneeling before one of the many shrines to Inari that dotted the countryside. He was dressed all in white, from the simple headband tied around his forehead to the bleached sandals on his feet. His tanto still lay sheathed before him as he finished offering up his prayers.
A flood of relief washed over her. She’d made it.
“Jin!” she called out. The only thing keeping her voice from cracking was how furious with him she was.
He whipped his head around, eyes going wide as he saw her.
“Yuna,” he said, pushing himself up to a standing position.
“You’d better not be doing what I think you’re about to do,” she said, storming her way toward him. “Because if you are, I’ll save you the trouble and kill you myself.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “I didn’t want you to see.”
“You shouldn’t be here either,” she hissed. “After everything we’ve been through, you want to throw your life away? I didn’t take you for a coward.”
Her throat felt tight and raw and nausea swam in her belly, but she wouldn’t break. Not yet.
“I’m doing this for you,” he said gently. “I won’t see you live like this, Yuna. You deserve better. I only thought…”
“That killing yourself was the solution?” she interrupted. “You think I deserve that?”
“You deserve to be able to have a normal life,” he said. “As long as I’m around, as long as you stay by my side, you won’t have one.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her a step toward him. There was agony in his eyes despite the steadiness of his voice.
“Yuna,” he said softly. “If I can give you a better life by dying, I’ll happily face death a thousand times. Please, let me do this. For you.”
Yuna’s breath hitched in her throat as she tried unsuccessfully to choke back a sob.
“Go back to the Dawn Refuge,” he continued. “Sell my armor; it should get you enough gold to start over. You can leave this island, find someone to start a family with. Forget about this place. Forget about me.”
“I can’t,” she said. Shaking, Yuna removed one of his hands from her shoulder and held it firmly against her belly. She knew it was too soon for Jin to feel the little flutter, but he would understand. He had to. “I’ve already got a family here. And so do you.”