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ooc: Log of Fujiko & Goemon doing canon-mates stuff (omg Fujiko has canonmates *SHOCKED*)
Who: Fujiko & Goemon
Where: On the way to deal with Momichi
When: Let's go with Wednesday the 25th (can be changed if you prefer)
Why: Dealing with stuff (hmm I need a Goemon & Fuji icon but the only one I have is with them surfing :|)
What: Mostly talking
Rating: PG for Language.
Fujiko shot him another cautious glance for the fifth time in the last fifteen minutes. To say she was nervous about this didn't beging to cover it. Double crossing Momichi was more than welcome in her book. Bastard deserved a lot worse than anything she could do to him a hundred times over. But of course it was just a reminded that the dead could and did come back here. How long before she'd have to deal with Poon again? And not just his ghost. She didn't want Lupin there but at the same time she was terrified that she wouldn't be able to face it all without him.
And in the meanwhile even just dealing with Goemon on her own was unpleasant. They hadn't gotten along since the first time she'd been coerced into working with Momichi. And even with Lupin as a buffer it'd been difficult. How many times had he stormed off refusing to even work with his best friend as long as Fujiko was there too? It had always felt like working with the Beatles to her with her as Yoko Ono. And in the end she wanted to do what she did best and run the hell away. But this time, no running. She was facing it. Even if it scared her half to death.
At least if he got mad enough to cut up the mini-sub she had an aqualung stashed nearby to swim away.
Where: On the way to deal with Momichi
When: Let's go with Wednesday the 25th (can be changed if you prefer)
Why: Dealing with stuff (hmm I need a Goemon & Fuji icon but the only one I have is with them surfing :|)
What: Mostly talking
Rating: PG for Language.
Fujiko shot him another cautious glance for the fifth time in the last fifteen minutes. To say she was nervous about this didn't beging to cover it. Double crossing Momichi was more than welcome in her book. Bastard deserved a lot worse than anything she could do to him a hundred times over. But of course it was just a reminded that the dead could and did come back here. How long before she'd have to deal with Poon again? And not just his ghost. She didn't want Lupin there but at the same time she was terrified that she wouldn't be able to face it all without him.
And in the meanwhile even just dealing with Goemon on her own was unpleasant. They hadn't gotten along since the first time she'd been coerced into working with Momichi. And even with Lupin as a buffer it'd been difficult. How many times had he stormed off refusing to even work with his best friend as long as Fujiko was there too? It had always felt like working with the Beatles to her with her as Yoko Ono. And in the end she wanted to do what she did best and run the hell away. But this time, no running. She was facing it. Even if it scared her half to death.
At least if he got mad enough to cut up the mini-sub she had an aqualung stashed nearby to swim away.
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Fujiko's looming presence did nothing to help. He had last seen her standing akimbo, frowning a bit petulantly as if she meant to shame him into swimming the rest of the way. But her air had since changed... uneasy anticipation radiating from her body and washing up against him, pricking his nerves.
It was not the first time they had half-grudgingly cooperated with each other, independent of Lupin and Jigen; and he was convinced, from experience, that her offer of help was not put forth without a desire to profit from the arrangement. This was likely her means of ingratiating herself with him, inevitably burdening him with a sense of obligation. No matter how shameful the favour she would ask in turn, his honour demanded that he acquiesced.
Their relationship had been made shaky ever since her role as conspirator with Momochi had revealed her fierce lust for material goods – but, time had since dullened the sting of betrayal. The pain was no longer as raw and personal; it hurt less and less to remember the small, sensual curve of her smile when they had first met, a seeming promise of infinite possibilities. He had simply accepted that it had been a different Mine Fujiko who he had loved as a younger man; a sweet-tempered, demure woman who never existed.
Goemon took a deep breath from his hara, quietly resigning himself to his situation. She knew the soft spots in his pride – and at least, she wasn't going out of her way now to peck at them while he scrabbled for calm and composure.
"Do you have rope with you?" He asked all at once, without opening his eyes.
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She knew the dozens of ways he could or rather, would, respond to it all but that was really half of the fun. Knowing, waiting and the small edge of schadenfreude.
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Silence descended, heavy and sullen - and for a while he sat there, frowning as his mind toyed with her words, teasing sense out of them. There had been something heart-wrenchingly brittle about her voice, her sexually-confident haughtiness laid on too thickly, as if to form a barrier. His frown gradually softened in realization, anger leaking out of him.
"I understand Momochi is as much your enemy as he is my own..." Goemon began thoughtfully, his gaze downturned. He faltered for a moment, looking as if he meant to add something more. But pressing his lips into a solemn line, he left it at that.
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Taking a breath from his hara, he shut his eyes on the image of Fujiko's stiffening back, his fists clenching and unclenching powerlessly over his thighs. His hands felt rubbery.
"...When will we arrive in Poft?" He asked more rawly than he meant to, desperately needing a sense of how much time was left to pull himself together.
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“I don't need reassurance!” He shouted before he could catch himself, burning with the humiliation that he had exuded waves of unease strong enough for her to feel compelled to reassure him. It was as if he were someone's child in need of coddling. His parents had been fiercely proud people despite their impoverishment, toughened by their ordeals and expecting nothing less of him; they had let go of his hand the moment he had learned to stand on wobbly legs. Where was his dignity and restraint?
A stab of icy self-awareness jarred him to his senses, his eyes wide and unseeing.
Chest heaving, he gradually willed his shoulders to drop, inch by inch, feeling raw and vulnerable as he shrank into himself. " ... "
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An old wound had been torn open.
“Tell yourself what you will, but I will never forget that you seduced Lupin and myself merely to get your hands on a rock! Everything you showed me then was a lie!; do you expect me to forgive you?!” His nostrils flared fiercely. “It is your own fault that you dared to work for that man!!”
Pausing for breath and to allow his intensity to sink in, he became aware of his briskly pounding pulse, the heavy, sickened dizziness suffusing his body. His Adam's apple felt like a stone lodged in his throat.
Too soon, he remembered a calloused hand sliding down his body in some parody of affection, stopping to wrestle with his obi. The same hand that would roughly grab him by the collar, tugging him down. He'd fall over the tatami with a heavy thump of something dead, his half-lidded, dispassionate eyes staring into emptiness as he curled into a dark crawlspace in his mind, the only part of him that was his own. There, he was unshakable at the cost of his sense of time, his sense of self. After a while, he'd scarcely feel the hard knot of another man's obi digging into his backbone. "Move!" Momochi would roar into his ear, his breath hot and hoarse. Goemon's fingernails would find grooves in the tatami someone else had made.
The purpose of their meetings at dusk had always clear, the understanding omitting the need for a ceremonious reception, for a superfluous exchange of words. Everyone who came knew what was expected.
“Above all, the student must be prepared to lay down his life for his sensei,” Goemon would repeat hollowly when prompted, with an air of having learnt by rote.
Hungry, predatory eyes glinted behind a screen of smoke.
“...Just his life?” The old man would challenge snidely, the corner of his lips tweaking into a lopsided smile. He snuffed the embers dimly lighting his face, mashing the cigarette to a pulp. Darkness flooded in.
The ronin, tight-lipped, stared at the wall with no sense of how long he was silent, his gaze glazed over like a freshly-killed animal. Dependent so long on cementing that phlegmatic expression onto his face, it came to him unbidden; a perfected art.
Shaken and self-conscious, he suddenly understood he couldn't jab accusing fingers at Fujiko without doing the same to himself; he too, was guilty of making the mistake of serving a scoundrel, looking for pride, a sense of belonging, and usefulness in the wrong place.
He shook his head dismissively, needing a long time before he could find his voice. When he next spoke, his tone was low and subdued, like a man beaten within an inch of his life. "Use the rope, and let us be done with this."
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It wasn't rational to blame Goemon for Momichi's appearance but she did. Him and Zenigata. Momichi hadn't been around until they showed up and just because Goemon and Zenigata didn't want to be there didn't stop others from following. Pieces of her history she wanted to run from the rest of her life to try to escape from. "Don't move," she snapped, long fingernails brushing the back of his wrists softly. "And maybe, just maybe if you were a LITTLE smarter Goemon..." her blood boiled. Things she wanted to say and yet couldn't. The words got stuck. She'd spent the last eight years ignoring those moments in time, ignoring that it had happened, refusing to take responsibility or even acknowledge anything had happened.
"Fool," she muttered in a low voice, stroking his cheek slowly with a fingernail. "Why do you think I wanted that rock? Money? Power? Did I get either of those in exchange? I usually DO get what I want Goemon. And Momichi died. I'll do anything to get what I want, but I didn't get out of there without getting what I wanted. So think on that, why don't you?" She still spoke cryptically, a woman of mystery, letting him come to his conclusions, however mistaken or accurate. It was the only way she knew. "Face it, you aren't mad because of why I manipulated you, you're mad that I did it at all. Because you can't face that a big strong guy like you could get outsmarted even if I HAD good intentions." She grabbed her seat again. Pushing Goemon too far and he could draw his weapon any minute and strike her down but then he wouldn't be able to get to Momichi properly and even the swordsman had enough brains to see that far ahead. She was pretty sure at least.
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As if held at gunpoint, Goemon was left staring hard at the opposite end of the hall, unblinking; seconds dragged into the next. But it wasn't until she unexpectedly touched him that he acknowledged her presence further, a frisson of defiance passing through him. Shoulders stiff with tension, he kept his eyes locked forward, a muscle in his clenched jaw rippling. It was gesture devoid of teasing playfulness on her part, her fingernail threatening like the edge of a knife.
"Good intentions...?" He echoed, with a tone of bitter incredulity. His eyebrows lowered. "What am I to think when you brush the wounds you inflict on others off your shoulders as if they are nothing? Lupin might have forgiven you time and time again, but I - -"
He broke off suddenly with a brisk shake of his head, thoroughly frustrated with the emotions muddling his mind, yanking his focus from what mattered.
The principles of bushido stayed his restless hand; it would go against every fibre of his being to lift one against a woman unless his life or the well-being of another was in threat.
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Regardless, Goemon didn't doubt that Momochi's cruelty extended to more than merely his students; a person rotten to the core and intoxicated with arrogant power was bound to leave few untainted.
“A man so secretive will not share his business with the world.” He murmured; he then smiled slightly, wryly, at the mention of 'truth'. The determination to withdraw himself from the conversation was easily forgotten; he found himself fiercely roped in yet again.
“If the truth is this important, then why have you waited this long?” Faltering, he looked pensively to one side, his smile fading; he resented the unexpected, dull ache in his chest. “...To where it no longer means anything?” To me.
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She sighed, "Momichi was dead. That should have been the end of it. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life rehashing something that..." She shook her head. "It's just easier to let idiots believe whatever they want. Whatever they will. I can't MAKE you change your mind. You were so certain I wanted to be your girl that when you found out THAT truth... Why make that even worse with more truth?"
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Goemon refused to look her way, a wounded look surfacing in his eyes; but for all the anger coiling and squirming inside him, her words still held the power to tighten his chest with guilt. If she had ruefully approached him years ago, when he was sore over her deception and licking his wounds, he sensed that the attempts on her part to justify her actions would have fallen on deaf ears, only inflaming his anger - the anger of naive youth. The anger of a human being.
“Perhaps Lupin knows your truth is a delusion of your creation that absolves you of your wrongdoings." Goemon replied, an icy undercurrent to his voice belying his calm delivery. "Others here might be as foolish to believe all of which you say, as I once did, but I know better. ...I suppose it is this for which I am grateful to you.” He snorted softly, humourlessly, staring into space. It was a while until he resumed, his expression darkening. “...If it is trust you hope for others to find in you, you must earn it.”
In the end, he wasn't sure what he expected now from Fujiko; the decency to dig up an apology? The acknowledgment that she had used him as a stepping stone towards achieving some higher goal? Heaving an imperceptible sigh, he let his eyes fall shut. Regardless of the emotions pulling him every which way, he had to thrust them aside - in spite of everything, it was still his duty to protect her. His vow was unbreakable.
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If you close your eyes to everyone, you will never see those who mean to help you... Goemon verged on saying, but bit it back, sensing the message wouldn't sink past her skin.
When Lupin and Jigen had pulled him out from under Sandayu Momochi's foot, he had been all but indescribably relieved, wearing the same expression of glassy-eyed hate he had seen on fellow students' faces whenever Sensei had summoned them in the small hours of the morning. He had been reluctant to grow attached to anyone then, let alone those men who seemed to answer his threats with derisively careless shrugs, those men whose laughs had worked his blood to a boil. He hoped to maintain an icy professionalism and keep them an arm's length away, but somewhere along the lines, his own sentiments had betrayed him. It had been an uphill battle to learn and unlearn, to stop overanalyzing every pat on the shoulder and to find sleep when the darkness in an empty room had felt intimately threatening.
But, in the end, he had finally learned to trust another human being. And perhaps, one day, she would too.
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Taught by privation to be fiercely independent, the ronin could relate to how company chafed him at times, moreso when he was determined to resolve his problems on his own, regardless of the risk, to prove his worth. The impending confrontation with Momochi was no different. Everything was a matter of honour, he had convinced himself - but pride and dignity were always under threat, equally important.
Nestled in the back of his mind, there were little, niggling lies that brought him cold comfort; the thought he might be strong enough to forge ahead in life without being dependent on support outside himself; the thought that he could avoid emotional and physical weakness his father had punished smartly and accordingly. He had fought loneliness alone; he could therefore fight his demons alone.
"How much time is left?"
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In the end, he was indifferent as to where anyone stood on his choice to put his life and limb at risk, being altogether prepared to knock just about anyone aside who meant to restrain him. There were some things he had to resolve as a ronin, and as a man; he owed to himself, and more importantly, innocent bystanders, to step up to the occasion.
"This ends today." he mused soberly, looking towards the porthole window.