#The more I've thought about it the more I think of Goemon and Murasaki as... 'Maybe at a different less chaotic time in our lives.'

[theimpossiblescheme]

“Where have you been?!”--for Goemon and whoever you want!

Goemon could already feel his heart sink a bit when a boy no older than seven answered the door, cracking it open just enough to turn on the porchlight above them.  “C-Can I help you, Mister—” he nervously eyed the sword at his side—“Mister Samurai?”

“Yes, can you tell me if… if the lady of the house is home?”  He wasn’t exactly sure what the proper form of address was.  Calling her by her first name seemed too familiar, but he couldn’t be sure if she’d changed her last name in the… fifteen years?  Since he’d last seen her.

(Had it really been fifteen years?  How had he let the time fly away from him like that?  What could he have possibly been too busy with to come back, even just to say hello?)

The boy nodded and hid a few more inches behind the door, turning his face away.  “Mom!” he called, and Goemon’s heart sunk a little bit deeper. “There’s somebody at the door! Says he wants to see you!”

“What is it, Kōhei?” A woman’s voice sounded down the inside hallway, followed by the whisper of socked feet.  Then another hand came to nudge open the door, and there was Murasaki.  Dressed in worn grass-stained blue jeans and a yellow cardigan, her long hair pinned up out of her face in a loose bun and showing a few strands of grey at her temples. Certainly thinner and more tired-looking than he remembered her, but her face lit up with a brilliant smile as she recognized him.

“Goemon!”  She sounded shocked, but delighted at the same time. “What are you doing here?”

Suddenly that sounded like a very good question.  But Goemon tried to maintain his composure.  “I… I hope I’m not intruding.  I thought I might stop by and—and see how you were doing.”

“Okay.”  She nodded slightly, as if still registering his presence, before seeming to relax a bit and opening the front door wider.  “Yeah, come on in!  Kōhei—” she ran a gentle hand through the boy’s hair—“this is Mom’s old friend, Goemon.  He’s the one who saved our whole family from the Fuma clan, remember?”

Kōhei ducked behind Murasaki’s pantleg and muttered a quick “hi” before dashing off down the hall.  Goemon couldn’t help but give a tiny smile as he slipped off his shoes, discarded his sword, and stepped inside.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s just shy,” Murasaki said as she watched him run off, tucking a few loose strands of hair back into her bun before turning back to Goemon.  “So what brings you all the way out here?”  The where on earth have you been?! was implied, even if it was a gentle urging rather than a demand, and for a moment Goemon had no idea what excuse he could possibly give.  What did one even say after fifteen years?

“I—Lupin and Jigen and I had been travelling for a while, and I had… I had started to miss home. And I figured along the way I would come and visit you… since it’s been so long.”  We’ve done so much together, Murasaki, you wouldn’t believe, his thoughts raced wildly.  We stole from palaces, we robbed the biggest casino in the world, we saved a princess and uncovered a worldwide conspiracy… and I never even thought to write to you.  And it’s been too long for any apology to be good enough.  I wish you could have seen it, I know Lupin wanted to invite you along all those years ago, and I know you wanted to see the world.  I’m sorry I never took him up on it when I had the chance.  “I hope I didn’t come at a bad time,” was what he said instead.

“No, no, it’s okay!” she quickly reassured him.  “Actually, you came at a great time—I was just making us a late supper.  We’ve been so busy today the time kind of got away from us, but you’re welcome to join us!”

Goemon blinked.  Of all the responses she could have given, that was the most optimistic one, but he’d always suspected it was just wishful thinking.  Now that he was here… “I’d… I would like that.”  

Murasaki gave him another smile, an even brighter one this time, and gestured for him to follow her. He still remembered his way around the Suminawas’ old home surprisingly well, although the large TV in the living room and the power strips with multiple long extension cords running to and from the kitchen threw him for a moment, and he almost sat on someone’s stuffed dog next to the dining room table.  While Murasaki busied herself in the kitchen, he glanced around the place through the open dividing screens, taking it all in.  It was still the same house, the same woodwork, the same art on the walls and shelves, the same view of the garden outside… but it felt very different now.  More energetic in a way, more lived-in.

“That boy, Kōhei… is he yours?”  He had to be—she’d clearly named him after her grandfather, who must have passed away years ago.  Another pang wrung through Goemon at the thought.

“Mm-hm.”  Murasaki rearranged a few pots on the stovetop before getting a new one out for tea and filling it with water.  “Kaneto and I adopted him.  We’d always wanted kids, but neither of us wanted…”  She shrugged demonstratively.  “You know.”

Goemon nodded.  At least she’d found someone else who understood what she truly wanted in a marriage, even if it might seem like comparatively little.  “What does Kaneto do for a living?”

“We both teach!  At the high school the next town over—he teaches history, I teach biology.”  Setting out two teacups on the counter and leaving the water to boil, she turned back around to face her guest.  “And one the weekends he helps me with the garden.  That’s what we were doing all day until I sent him out to go run errands for me,” she added with a somewhat embarrassed wave down at her jeans.

Goemon only nodded again. He remembered her telling him, way back when they first met, that she wanted to earn her teaching degree someday, even if she had to put it on hold to care for her family.  Now she seemed truly happy with both, and he was happy for her truly—it would be selfish of him to even entertain the slightest bitter thought…

It wasn’t bitterness exactly.  More of a heaviness that sat at the bottom of his ribs and the pit of his stomach, even at seeing her current happiness.  A feeling he’d always tried so hard to transcend over the years, but it never quite worked.

A photograph hanging nearby caught his attention—a family portrait.  Murasaki stood beaming next to a man in a smart, slightly old-fashioned suit with dark brown hair.  They were about the same height, which made Goemon chuckle, but the Kaneto in the frame still managed to smile down at his wife like he couldn’t believe his good luck. Next to her stood a much more energetic Kōhei, grinning from ear to ear, and at Kaneto’s side stood a little girl, presumably their daughter, in bright yellow overalls and a fluffy white bow in her ponytail.  All four of them looked deliriously happy, and Goemon’s heart suddenly ached so much he could feel his shoulders sinking as the heaviness expanded.  He’d missed it.  He’d missed all of it.  She’d found love again, gotten married for real this time, taken in her own adorable children, built a new life for herself…

And he hadn’t even thought to write to her.  She’d never left his thoughts, never for a moment, but thoughts couldn’t be delivered to someone’s home, couldn’t be read as plainly as words on a page.  So much time he’d never get back, so many chances gone. He didn’t even feel bitter at the loss—he just felt sad, almost ashamed, that he’d never known, never got a chance to be there when it all happened.  It felt odd, almost too simple assigning such a basic word to such a strong emotion, but sometimes the simplest explanations were the best.

“It sounds like I’ve missed quite a lot.”

He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but a frown line in Murasaki’s forehead deepened as she tended to the tea.  “Well… you were gone for a long time.”  Her voice was still gentle and nonjudgmental, but the additional weight of her words settled at the pit of his stomach and joined the sour, regretful churn there.

“I know.”  It was silly, really… Goemon wasn’t entirely sure what he’d expected.  Even years before the whole mess with the Fuma clan, they had both been practically children when they first met.  And while she’d been able to stay that way a little longer, joyous and bouncy and carefree even into her twenties, he had to grow up rather quickly.  Momochi’s treachery, Jinen’s murder, that terrible cult pursuing Fujiko… and all of this before he and Lupin found each other.  Since then he’d met three new friends, watched at least two old ones die, and forced himself to reconsider his place in the world. He could never be the same callow naïve youth he’d started as, and he could never be the same man who’d left that day, promising her he’d return once he’d completed his training… maybe he just didn’t like the reminder.

I’m not going to wait for you, Goemon!

It seemed nothing had. And it was selfish of him to expect otherwise.  He’d once though that no matter how much the world changed, he would stay the same… now he realized even that wasn’t true.  He was part of the same world as Murasaki, as Lupin and Jigen and Fujiko—time passed the same for all of them, no matter how they tried to fight it.

“I didn’t know it would be so long.”  It was no excuse, but more of a musing… no one ever did, did they?  And then the next thing they knew, fifteen years had gone by without so much as a by-your-leave.

And Murasaki, kind and forever buoyant soul that she was, still refused to judge him.  Or if she was, she never betrayed even a hint of it. “I get it.”  She poured the water and tea leaves back into the pot to let them steep a few minutes.  “Life goes on, you know?  It just… happens, no matter where we are.  That’s what Grandpa used to say.”  A silence ensued then, not quite entirely comfortable, but still companionable as Goemon pondered her words.  They were true enough—if someone had told that callow naïve youth that he’d spend years of training to be an assassin, that he’d throw in his lot (and fall in love) with a pack of thieves, that he’d turn down marriage into another proud and noble family… he definitely would have laughed.

What was the phrase? The best laid plans of mice and men… they all certainly seemed to go awry in his experience.

“But for what it’s worth,” Murasaki ventured, emerging from the kitchen with two fresh cups of tea and pressing one into his hand as she sat across from him, “I am glad you came to visit.”

“… I am, too.”  He was here now, at least.  And perhaps… for all the time he’d lost, there was still time to make it up.  He wasn’t planning on stopping anytime soon.  As strangely final was his last goodbye to Lupin and Jigen had felt, he loved them and Fujiko far too much to leave their sides entirely.  Besides, a samurai’s lot was to serve until death, or at least until he was no longer useful.  Retirement simply wasn’t in the cards for Goemon—he’d made peace with that long ago.  But strangely enough, the sentiment didn’t have the same… rigid structure it once had. It was less of a solemn vow, a mast he needed to lash himself to lest he be tempted by some other siren song, and more of a recognition of the way things were.  Of where his life had led him and would continue to lead.

It had led him and Murasaki in different directions.  With their own respective families, unorthodox as his own was (and he could just imagine the insufferably saccharine look on Lupin’s face if he’d heard Goemon refer to him as such).  And they were both happy.  Maybe years ago he might have resented that, but now… this also felt like the way things were meant to be.  Tea on the table, supper on the stove, sitting across from a loved one.  What more could he ask?

He did want to at least offer a little more, though—it only seemed fair.  “I will probably go back to my family’s old home for a little while, but… if you ever need somebody to help you with the children or in the garden, I’d be more than happy.”

“That sounds wonderful. Oh!”  She reached across the table to pat his hand excitedly, a quick succession of feather-light taps.  “And you have to meet Mayumi—she would adore you.”

Goemon smiled again, and some of the weight in his chest began to lessen.  “I look forward to it.”