Disclaimer: Samurai Champloo and all of its characters belong to Shinichiro Watanabe, not me. OB-viously.

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It all started when she said something, something so light and airy and free that it made you feel the same way.

The steel-lined geta at your feet were suddenly light.

The coarse fabric on your shoulders, the weight of death and confusion and battle, felt airy.

You felt free.

You feel a tingling sensation at the corners of your mouth. You sense something new.

A feeling was close to sweeping over you like waves, and that feeling promised something different.

You were so ready to welcome it, if only for just a moment.

You chastise yourself, knowing full well you should know better than to believe in promises.

Because when you see her face, and you see her eyes, they steal it all away.

They're full of promises, sure, but none of them are meant for you.

She isn't here to save you.

And you're frustrated. You're frustrated that that tingling sensation at the corners of your mouth never came to fruition. The promise of something different never came, and instead became just more of the same.

She looks at him as if everything light and airy and free had suddenly been personified. She looks at him in that fluttery, delicately innocent way that calls for things it doesn't understand. She's looking at him that way.

And you're mad. You're so mad.

Because it's always, always, always him and it's never, ever, ever you. And it's always, always, always in that way, and it's never, ever, ever your way.

But you let the anger stew. You let it coagulate into something worse – into complacency.

Because you know your place.

And it isn't where he is now, next to her.

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A/N: Yes, it's not happy. Yes, it's not Reflection Eternal (sorry about that one, my computer melted down, lets not dwell). But it is something, something that burst forth from my chest and demanded to be written. I really rather hope you enjoy it, even though it's angsty and one-sided and anticlimactic.

I don't think he's OOC. I don't think there are enough realistically-angsty Mugen fics - everyone has the capacity, everybody does it. He's not whining. He's not feeling sorry for himself. He's just pissed, because he can't have something he wants. Mugen, who knows who he is and knows where he comes from, knows that birthrights are birthrights, and just because you can't have what you want doesn't mean you can't want it.