Chapter Text
It is dark when Mizu wakes—dark, except for the familiar glow of the forge, and the glimmer of the stars through the window. The darkness is what registers first, and after that—the pain. Cracked ribs, a broken humerus, all manner of cuts and scrapes and bruises. Not much new in that regard, other than the bullet hole in the right shoulder. That one passed cleanly through the flesh. Lucky you.
“You’re really something,” Taigen drawls from the other corner of the hut. Mizu startles and he laughs quietly. “I told you we weren’t done yet. Didn’t you believe me?”
Mizu sits up very, very slowly and bites back a groan. The light of the forge nearly fades to black but after a moment, it returns to its normal soft glow. Fragments of memory now start drifting back: standing on the road just outside Edo with Ringo on a beautiful spring day—the roar of the guns and the screams—the smoke and crackle of the flames—Abijah Fowler leering—oh, you just keep getting better, little miss— “What happened?”
“Fowler is dead,” Taigen says. “You killed him. You don’t recall?”
“No.” Mizu slumps back. After all this time, to have achieved revenge without even being able to remember it…but if Taigen says it is done, then it is done; he would not lie about this. So now there are two left to kill. Fowler had even said their names—what were they?
“Well, he’s definitely dead. Heiji Shindo, too. And the shogun. Most of Edo is gone; the fire burned for three days. Ringo brought you out of there scorched and barely alive and I found the two of you on the way back to Kohama. Never seen anything so pathetic.” Taigen pauses. “He’s a very useful fellow, this apprentice of yours.”
“I know he is,” Mizu says with a smile, though even that hurts at the moment. They all owe Ringo their lives several times over. “And what about your princess? She survived? Where is she now?”
“Ah. Well.” Taigen shifts away, but not before Mizu glimpses the hurt and embarrassment in his eyes. “Akemi…chose another path. I’m no shogun’s son, after all. Just an idiot swordsman from Kohama.”
“Not even the best idiot swordsman from Kohama,” Mizu agrees blandly.
Taigen glowers. “Oh, this again. Look, I can admit you’re good, but may I remind you that that matter hasn’t even been formally settled—”
“Some of us have to actually work in the morning and would like to sleep,” Master Eiji interrupts from across the room. Ringo, meanwhile, snores away peacefully at the Swordfather’s side; after several months of traveling together, Mizu has determined that the man could sleep through a fucking taiko drill in an iron mine. During a thunderstorm.
“Sorry, master, sorry,” Mizu hurriedly apologizes, but too late—the laughter is already bubbling up, and after a moment, Taigen starts laughing as well. It’s a good sound, one that makes Mizu’s heart unexpectedly feel lighter. “For what it’s worth,” Mizu assures Taigen—in a quieter voice this time—“I think we haven’t seen the last of your princess. When she wants something, she’s horribly determined. She ran away from her father’s palace in Kyoto and talked her way into a brothel in Mihonoseki just to find you. You know she tried to drug and stab me? I hadn’t done a damn thing to her!”
“She did?” Taigen asks with a snigger. “Well, I’m sure you deserved it.”
“What must a man do to have some peace and quiet in his own home?” Master Eiji groans once again. He thumps the ground with his fist.
“Apologies, Swordfather,” Mizu answers over Taigen’s muffled chuckling.
“I don’t want your apologies. I’d just like you both to shut up.”
So they shut up. Mizu listens to the quiet crackle of embers in the forge and Ringo snoring thunderously from the corner. Fowler is dead, and I am alive, and I am home. Two more to go, but they can wait until morning. Everything can wait until morning.
Mizu lets out a contented sigh and falls into a long, dreamless sleep.