Mugen touches the blue stones, cradles them between his fingertips. Fuu asks; Jin listens.
xxx
The rush of blade against blade—the raw sound of men dying. These are sounds he was born to hear, born to repeat. Gifts from his mother, to him.
xxx
There was a clang of metal, then the uncomfortable noise of death as another warden fell to the sand. Mugen watches her from behind a tree trunk that hid the expanse of his five-year-old body—the vital, lively heartbeat that powered his own. He calls her 'mother'.
She is a tall woman, petite yet far from frail, a wild mess of wood-brown curls about her head. Like her son, she is a child of the ocean and daylight, a sun-kissed goddess with fierce eyes, the same ones he will inherit one day. She is full of a ferocity that escaped her heart and saturated every pore of her body, even her womb, escaping to become an entire being all on its own.
She turns to him, noticing the large pair of similarly-colored eyes that watch her, and grins. Sharp-toothed, reckless, young. Like him, like he will be.
"Come out, Mugen," she orders, and he is a good boy who loves his mother and emerges from the brush. A man who is his father approaches not too long after, his own sword dripping with the reward of an escape gone well.
He is just as powerful as her, just as imposing, right eyebrow cut in a way Mugen will remember one day and decide to echo. His father looks stronger, wilder, but his image is not as mighty as his mother's. Mugen will only inherit his wiry, firm build and large hands; his fire is from his mother alone.
"Where are the rest of them?" she asks his father, her hand absently burying itself in Mugen's hair. He watches the sunlight catch and glint on the blue stones on her ears.
"Dead, of course. We won't be alone for long, though. They'll be comin' soon enough," his father gruffly answers. Mugen knows of the bad men always after his parents, but also knows they are nothing against them, against his mother. She looks down at him, then laughs.
"Let 'em come. Filthy bitches," she hisses.
"Bitches," Mugen repeats the singular word, not knowing what it means. Mugen's father roars with laughter, and so does his mother.
xxx
She taught him the world, taught him how to see it the way she has always seen it. She taught him not to follow its rules, not to blend and become nameless. She taught him how to be his own color, to sing his own song.
xxx
Mugen remembers everything his mother taught him. Eat an apple and it will clean your teeth. Rice can be cooked in a single heated stalk of bamboo. These leaves—these ones—see how they're smooth and not jagged like the rest? Rip them and rub them on your wounds and they'll stop hurting.
She was his greatest teacher, greater than Nature herself, and he will never forget her greatest lesson. It will forge him, whittle him, until he emerges a polished, rare thing without knowledge of capture.
He is distraught, but does not cry, wills himself to be tough. She is not crying—has forgotten how to cry—and he reminds himself to learn how to forget too.
"Daddy," he trembles, and she shakes her head, hair fluttering around like birds.
"These things happen, Mugen. People die all the time, but not you, you got me? Not you, not now," she whispers, hushing him against the trunk of the tree. He bites his tongue, bites back the sting of tears as she regards him with stern, unmoving eyes, strength he could only dream of achieving.
"Listen to me," she grips his face. "Do you remember what I told you? Do you remember what I said—what I told you to do when the bad men come?"
She pauses for him to remember, his little hands twisting the hem of his shirt. "You told me—to run. Run a lot, very far, and don't ever stay in one place for more than a day."
"What else?" she whispers, then flinches when the sound of horses echo from far away, the sound of men yelling. "What else, Mugen?" She whispers again, urgently, this time.
"Always be fast—always be faster, stronger, and that I will die if I don't—"he pauses to steady his wavering voice, "—because it's either them or me."
His mother grips the sides of his face, grins, smoothes his untamable hair.
"Yes—yes, that's right, baby. That's damn right. It's either them or you. When you point a sword at someone, it's either you kill them or they kill you, alright? And listen to me—are you listening? Remember what I told you? You've got to work for yourself, Mugen, by yourself, and for no one else. Your life is yours, so don't you dare—don't you dare—let anyone help you into your grave. Freedom is what makes a man, not power."
Mugen nods, eyes beginning to blur with the sting of tears but he still sees her smile, her earrings glittering. The noises of horses and people grow louder, and his mother grits her teeth towards their direction.
"So don't you forget, Mugen. Don't you forget. Run—run away from here in the opposite direction and don't look back. Remember what your name means, Mugen. Live up to that name. Don't let me down."
Her gaze darts to the left, where brush begins to rustle and the yelling gets louder, yelling things like 'over here!' and 'I think I see her!'
"Run now, go, run!" she hisses, and he does just that. Sprints away, bare feet against the rough forest floor, and doesn't look back. He hears her shouting—"Looking for me, you damn pigs? Over here! Come and get me!"—and then it disappears altogether, fading and swallowed the mouth of the forest.
But he doesn't look back and doesn't cry either.
xxx
Mugen's hatred for the world is not his own, either. It is her bitter legacy which he kept for himself, treasure dangling from his ears.
xxx
Mugen disobeys his mother just this once. He finds the shack on the other end of the island, in the middle of the night, and he scratches the mosquito bites on his bare legs. His mother had taught him that's where the dead go to rest, where she will one day be. The thought once enraged him until he cried, but she only smacked him across the face, making him stop.
But that's where he knows she is, and like a quiet bird he waits until the guards leave. He needs to do this before they burned her, before they burned all who dared try to gain their freedom back, and it filled him with a sense of purpose that made him feel bigger than he was.
He sees the open window and holds his breath as he slithers inside with a 'hup!'. The inside of the shack is dark, very dark, but he had learned to live with the night as he had with the sun. He feels around with little hands—there are too many people and he bumps one with his foot every two seconds. He is a little scared, but doesn't show it. He doesn't want to let her down.
"Momma," he whispers, getting down on his hands and knees. It smells very bad in the shack but he is familiar with it, the stench of defeat. "Momma, where are you?"
His left hand lands on a head of unruly curls and he withdraws immediately, then returns it when he realizes it is her.
"Momma—Momma—" he repeats the single word like a prayer, tugging at her shoulders when he finds them. She doesn't move, doesn't acknowledge him. He wants to cry again but fights the urge back into his heart. Not now, not when she needs him to be at his strongest.
So his tugging slows down to a stop and he simply lies at her side, curled up against the straw mat that bound her, and stares into the blank darkness of the shack, motionless. He doesn't know when he fell asleep—if he slept at all. It isn't sleep without her, without her warmth against him.
He wakes up to the sounds of men talking and it is a frightening and familiar enough noise that he bolts upward immediately even if he is still a little tired.
The first thing he sees is her hair pouring out from the end of the mat, but he doesn't scream or bawl. He is past that, he imagines her saying. Instead, he reaches in, past the curls, and feels for the two treasures he had come here for.
"I'm taking you with me, Momma," he declares, feeling the two cold orbs between his fingertips. "You're gonna be with me forever, you hear? You ain't leaving me on my own. Not if I can help it."
He pulls them free, gathers both tiny balls in one small fist as the lock to the shack begins to rattle. Like before, he doesn't look back as he slips out the window, drops down to the bush beneath and begins running again, his hand clamped around his new wealth.
Later, he remembers rolling the little blue globes around, watching the color shine and glisten, like entire seas trapped in his palms.
"Momma," he whispers, once and never again.
xxx
Fuu cries into her hands once he is done, and Jin can't meet his eyes. Mugen just grins, tells Fuu to shut the hell up. Sunlight is caught in those two cerulean spheres, and cannot escape.
x
A/N: My take on where Mugen's earrings came from. That's all. Concrit encouraged.