"Hama-urii"
--by POK September 2006
--for BBT's birthday (smiley here). Imagined from her painting "Recovery", which you can see at my website.
Usual disclaimer: I do not own the situations or characters of Samurai Champloo, but I love them, and try to make them happy.
And I'm very proud of this one.
--No smut, no violence, just dream logic and true love. Spoilers for episode 26, possibly
In the dim light of pain and silence, Mugen has this dream:
He wakes up, because Fuu is still crying, and he doesn't know why.
He opens one eye--expecting this to hurt, but the room is so shadowed that the eye doesn't flinch--and makes her out, a pale huddle in the doorway, her face buried in her hands.
"Hoi. Can't you take that somewhere else? I need to sleep."
"Mugen!" Her head snaps up. "Oh gomen--of course you do---" she swipes her sleeve over her eyes. "I'll go outside."
"Not so fast. What's the matter?"
Silence. A sniffle. He tries to focus; something--something's not--
"I said , what is it already? And where's--"
Her face sinks back into her hands, and he gets it without one more word.
It's too quiet in here. And a scent's missing, the one he's slept nigh to all summer, cool and clean like rain and pine smoke. Even under a layer of blood and sweat, he'd know if that were here. It should be here. It's not.
He sits up--this really hurts, but he ignores it--and scrubs his face with his fingertips, rubs his eyes. "S'okay. Quit crying. I'll go get him."
"You'll what?"
"--here." He reaches back for his sword, ignoring the half-healed muscles that scream at him, and pulls the tanto from the saya. Holds it out to her. "You'll have to kill me for this to work."
She stares at him, and he knows he has to explain. Which isn't so bad, really. Might make her feel better to know.
"See--when I was down there--I told the fafuji about him."
"Told the--who?"--she's not crying now.
"The bird guys--they're ancestral spirits, kinda--maybe you saw them. I said 'look, this one might die too soon, like I do, so if you see him, grab him for me. Don't let him drift off to whatever boring flower-garden-Buddha's paradise he might be aimed at. Get him and hold him, and I'll come get him soon.' "
"You can't talk to gods like that!"
"They aren't quite. 'Sides, they know me by now."
She really looks at him this time. He can't tell whether she's thinking he's feverish and talking nonsense, or is just plain crazy and irreverent to boot. Last one, probably. She knows him that well.
"You'd really do a thing like that." The way she says it is almost affectionate.
"'Course I did. Can't let him die for no reason--we have to settle things. And those ones've always listened to me, ever since I was a kid."
(It's true, too: the spirits' whispering goes as far back as Mugen remembers. He's always known where to dive, and when it would rain, and that he'd be very, very hard to kill. They like him. Say he's got a destiny...)
"But anyway--I have to be dying to go there. So here." Holds out the tanto again. "Right under this rib--see? It's sharp, it'll be easy."
Now she's sure it's the fever, he can tell, because her expression gets careful and calm. She takes the knife from him slowly, and sets it behind her.
"Mugen, you're very sick. You need to go back to sleep."
"You think I'm just dizzy, right?"
"You must be, if you think I'd nurse you and worry about you all this time and then--and then just---" she's ready to cry again. "How could I do that? Aren't enough people dead? And--"
He sighs. "--Fuu." And that makes her look up--he's never done it before.
"I swear, he's not really gone. He's sitting on the shore of Nirai-Kanai, poor bastard, no one there speaks Japanese and he has NO idea what's what, and he will be 'til I go bring him back. The fafuji would not lie to me, swear to fire they wouldn't."
"He's--" she wants to believe it--"really--in that place?"
"Nirai Kanai. The undersea island." Slow nod. "Where the southern gods are…he's there all right."
He is so strange and so sure, with that not-this-world glow in his eyes, that she's almost convinced. He sees it, and presses the point.
"We'll be back before you can count fifty, promise." He draws a line with his finger where she should strike. "Set me up, Risu-hime. Won't even hurt."
But she shakes her head. "Even if you're right, I can't."
"OK, OK. Give me back the knife."
And he knows she knows what he's going to do, as she holds it out to him and closes her eyes.
The Silent Ones are expecting him, and point, as one, off across the shore.
Mugen walks down the beach, in the unchanging light, toward the edge of the opalescent sea.
There--
Standing where the water sweeps the dark shore.
Pale as a shell in his bloody indigo rags, long black hair swept back like wings in the wind that comes from nowhere--
--there you are.
"Hoi, samurai yuhei."
There are other ghosts there, gazing out to sea, but Jin's is the only head that turns.
"Yeah, you. Time to go."
"--go?"
"Back."
"So this is your doing." Steady regard of the sea-colored eyes. "I thought I just wasn't worthy."
"Not time to decide that yet."
Those eyes note the fresh wound in his chest and Mugen hopes he won't ask. Too small for a swordblade, and Jin knows there's no way he'd let someone inside his guard with a knife--
"-- c'mon."
Jin speaks before they've gone five paces.
"You did this on purpose, didn't you."
"Yeah, well." Shrug. "Only way she'd stop crying."
"You know what I mean."
"…I did." Mugen watches their feet on the untracked sand. "And you know why."
He's so silent that even dream-Mugen feels a twinge of unease. After all, it had been a fine warrior's death, single combat against a dangerous foe, likely just what the ronin had hoped for; he did have a right to resent being stripped of it.
But your promise to me, mine to you, that has got to mean more…
They have walked till they stand straight across from the point where he'd entered. He can see the fafuji still standing there, waiting in silence.
"We'll have to walk straight out from here, if we're gonna go back."
"And they're letting you leave again?" Jin indicates the still watchers.
Mugen nods silently. Jin gazes slowly around him, closes his eyes. Shade of a ghost's smile.
"Then it can't be helped. If we separate now, you could end up living forever."
They walk out into the sea, Mugen in the lead.
"You better hold on so we don't get split up on the way there. I promised to bring you, and she'll kick my ass if I don't."
Jin doesn't embrace him, of course--he wouldn't do that--but Mugen feels thin cold fingers curl tight around his arms, just over the elbow, and the weight that's hardly there leans into his back, head pressing the nape of his neck. Cool, sweet smell of rain and pine smoke; voice, barely a whisper: ".. Mugen."
You know why, he thinks, as the cold water slides up his chest. Death can't have you. Not till I let you go.
He takes hold of Jin's hands as the sea closes over his head.
He wakes up. And they're both there. He thinks, fever dream---what a weird one---
Salt water from wet hair runs into his eyes. Cold salt water.
And Jin is still holding his arm, threads of black seaweed caught in his fingers.
+
Hama-urii--an Okinawan ritual of purification by immersion in seawater.
Fafuji--the Okinawan name of the ancestor spirits which are called Futuki in Japanese.
Risu-hime--"squirrel princess"
(And yeah, he doesn't actually have that sword anymore, but it is a dream.)