Disclaimer: I don't own Samurai Champloo or any of its affiliated characters, which belong to Manglobe/Shimoigusa Champloos.
A/N: Side fic in the Nenju-verse; spoilers for the Evanescent Encounters (episodes #24 through 26) story arc. In bushido, chūugi is the virtue of loyalty.
Many thanks to ADSV, who asked about what we didn't see, and who always makes me think.
The Three Faces of Virtue
I. Chūugi
She waits until they are no longer awake to climb down to the beach once more. The old man will watch over them; he argued with her about going back, but not hard enough. They'll be fine, for now. She still worries — she knows even those two won't be able to recover from their injuriessoon. She does not think about the possibility that they will not.
(scarlet patterpatter poppy heads bloom against his side)
What is important is still there, she knows. She cannot leave it until morning.
The path is narrow and rocky and hard to see by the light of the still-glowing pyre. She slips in a few places, catching at stones and long grass to keep herself from falling. They cut her hands, the sharp edges of the rocks running through her hands like water, grass sawing at her palms; she clings to them anyway, because she knows the rocks will bear her weight easily and the roots of the beach grass go deeper by far than she can see.
(pale as snow pale as bone crimson river over his cold skin)
The smoke of the fire is cloying and too sweet. It tastes like blood as it rasps in her throat.
She knows where they must be, and after a moment, she begins to see them; they come out like stars in the nighttime sky. She collects the shards carefully, tenderly — she remembers him at his haughtiest, telling her they were the warrior's soul — and she cannot miss a single piece. The most easily seen ones she finds right away, but the smallest ones are harder. She looks anyway, because she can hardly do less than give them a whole.
(eyes like rips in paper)
She carries them back up the cliff without sparing a glance for the pyre, or for the cairn near the small house, because there is nothing to be done about those. Her thoughts are for the living, for the two men whose swords were hers.
The old man is waiting, when she comes in. He tried earlier to tend her wounds, but she would not have it. His glance is disapproval turned inside out and back again, as she lays the fragments on the floor like pieces of a shogi board. Here is Mugen's, here is Jin's; the shards are blackening with the blood that was not cleaned off them and are beautiful beyond any words for her to tell.
Mugen mutters, but does not wake. She goes to him and tends to his splinted arm; the bandaging has gone crooked and he settles as she straightens it. On his other side, Jin lies still, and she pauses to brush his dark tangled hair away from his face.
(they sleep and dream before waking)
Surely, she thinks, she can fit their pieces back together once more.