Chapter Text
Nothing escaped Goemon’s notice, sharp eyes slowly scanned the dark, laser filled room. He knew exactly where to stand, what angle, and what he should be waiting for, till then, he was to stand guard because nothing can beat zantetsuken. He’s come to rely on Lupin’s planning for heists, allowing himself to be used as a pawn instead of the brutish, cut-and-grab method that he used to use before he was fully integrated with this group. That felt like a lifetime ago, the faces of bygone masters flitted across his imagination but disappeared before he dwelled on it further.
In all honesty, he could be persuaded to leave, entertaining himself with only his thoughts when he could be back at the safehouse was getting tiring. The room was drab, it had no windows, and the journey down to it made him feel he was far deeper underground than he actually was. It was one of the basement rooms of a mansion belonging to some English millionaire. It was padded like a bomb shelter, yet bloated with security like a prized museum exhibit.
He had been tempted with wood-block prints; it was hard for him to say no to squirrelling away beautiful works of art for his own personal pleasure (he will not speak of the Mona Lisa again, especially not around Fujiko). Behind him was a safe that was the height of his hip. Safe-cracking was one of Lupin’s prized talents and Goemon, for better or for worse, never found himself interested in trying to surpass him in that area. His two friends, speaking of them, were somewhere else, either wading through a sewage pipe to get in or already inside the house, safe-cracking the room on the opposite end. Suffice to say, he won’t hear from them until they come here or Emergency SOS on the earwig.
For a split second his ears plucked the unmistakable sound of footsteps from the thick silence. The red lasers remained in place, so it was unlikely to be the people he should be expecting. He gripped the hilt of Zantetsuken, closed his eyes, and waited for the best moment to strike, right when the footsteps were at their loudest.
He struck out the blade, with perfect precision through a gap in the red lights of death. The glow illuminated the figure, frozen still from surprise.
“What are you doing here?” He asked, unamused. Zantetsuken’s tip nearly gave a blemish to the neck of an ethereal brown haired goddess, who stood tall in her heeled catsuit that hugged close to her wide hips and large breasts.
“Late night exercise. You got a problem with that?”
“Yet, here you are.” He remarked.
“Because I…I’ll tell you later. Would you put that thing down?” She sighed, “Nevermind, dumb question. I spied on them, they’re just being slow at cracking the safe.”
“And?”
“Do you want the woodblock or not? I’m pretty sure it’s in here, waiting for her new home.” He ignored her, gloved hands fondled the pull tab at her neck, unzipped her catsuit and exposed the part of her that put many under her spell, and he felt the roof of his mouth go dry. She walked past him, chest jiggling as if that was her intended effect, bent down and began to tinker with the locks.
“Sometimes scouting takes longer than I’d like, making the fake identity is one thing, but having to stay as ‘Angela from Liverpool’, the maid, gets tiring.” She jingled something, “By the way, the boys can’t hear us.” Goemon’s eyes flickered down, his earwig crushed between her nails. His fingers ghosted the shell of his ear. Without a care, she resumed. He wasn’t soothed by her presence, the only thing that changed was that he returned his sword to its sheath.
Backs turned against each other, Fujiko spoke. “We make a pretty good team.”
He said nothing in response to that. His feelings on the matter were complicated and difficult to unpack. That was the consequence of having been in each other's proximity for so long. She meant different things to him at different points in time. There was no linear trajectory, like driving around San Francisco with its treacherous steep streets. Lover, comrade, enemy, thorn in his side, ally…friend. She took on each label with dedication to the role. She was everything she needed to be to him, hiding her true self somewhere away. He once vowed to find the real Fujiko Mine, but his work was cut out for him.
The safe slowly creaked open. Goemon’s eyes darted over his shoulder. The red lasers that outlined everything in the room suddenly faded. Fujiko cursed under her breath. He went closer to her, about to lay a hand on the promised woodblock but Fujiko snatched it and held it close to her chest.
In the moment she should have said something, she hopped into a sprint instead and he sped after her. Damned woman. He called out to her, but she ignored him. She didn’t even want the print, she wasn’t supposed to be here - she made it clear to them that she didn’t really care about this heist and was going to wait for them back at the hideout, so what changed her mind? What made her want to come and terrorize Goemon?
Fujiko cut into a room, headed for what he thought was a dead end until the crack of glass woke him to her next moves.
“Fujiko!” She drove herself through the window. Glass shards sprayed everywhere, and the security alarms woke up screaming. Whatever she had in mind that justified her behaviour, none of that mattered to him. He slammed his fist on the wall and continued the chase. Not just for the art but for the ascertainment of her true motives. In his pocket, his phone rang and rang but he didn’t bother with it.
He gulped the cold air, felt it burn in his lungs. She took him through alleyways and backstreets of Paris, all to end up right back where they started, the mansion owned by the British millionaire. Goemon felt goosebumps on his arms, the lights were still out and the alarms had already gone off - she had predicted that Lupin would have shut them off? Or did she in preparation of her little stunt? The amount of questions he’s developing is beginning to frustrate him. Lucky for her, she’s always one step ahead of him. By the time he realized she made him run a circle, Fujiko scaled the building with ease, her grappling hook gadget propelled her all the way to the roof.
With no reason to turn the other way, Goemon summoned his wits and climbed all the way to the roof.
☾
Fujiko Mine sat in her skin tight catsuit on the mansard, her beautiful brown locks swaying in the wind. Goemon turned away from her, wanting to look at something else. The eiffel tower shrouded itself with the parisian night like a cloak, and loomed over as an anonymous judge to their meeting. The way her red lips were pursed, as if she was ready to burst into conversation, Goemon let her instead of wasting his breath.
“Haven’t you thought that you’re just a little too easy?” She asked, rhetorically, she was so obtuse sometimes that it drove him mad. “You’re better than one measly woodblock print.” She produced it from the darkness.
Astute observation, Fujiko, however it's not worth having him run around Paris for. He cared less and less about the artwork. She held it above her head, waving it around as if her fingers could just fling it below them into the Seine.
“Why bother?” Was all he managed to get out. He hoped it conveyed all of the questions he wanted to ask.
“Because, we needed more privacy.”
He frowned at her, “What could be so important? I am giving you nothing until I hear it.”
She tossed the woodblock print at his feet.
“I need help with a heist.”
That was oddly normal. Goemon didn’t know what to expect given everything she just put him through, but it certainly wasn’t something as mundane as heist planning. When he replayed the events in his head, the tell tale sign of her needing a favour was there. Dropping in, safe-cracking, stealing his earwig. She was vocally uninterested when Lupin was planning it all, insisting how boring she thought of the mansion owner, then day-of, wishing them Bon Voyage whilst she sat on the couch playing video games in-between lamenting her menstrual pains. Come to think of it, Goemon was so focused on his bribe, he didn’t actually know what Jigen and Lupin were here for.
“If it's advice you want, then there are better options. If you need my abilities, hire me.”
“It doesn’t work like that.” She was so desperate for leverage, just to get him to agree to whatever stipulation she had set up. Yet he felt so close to the truth, he just had to prod a little further.
“As I said before, you’re getting nothing from me until you utter the truth.”
Her face fell. If it was genuine or part of the scheme, he couldn’t tell.
“Marry me.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m running out of time, you’ve gotta trust me.”
He wanted to repeat what he just said, in the absence of it he gave her silence. Trust her? He almost scoffed in her face. At least stand up and say it while staring at him dead-on , give him a reason to believe that this is a serious demand.
“I can pay you if that’s what you want.”
Goemon stared, and waited for her to drop it. They could just lie, there was no reason to go through the hustle and bustle of getting a legally certified document. What would they even accomplish by having it when they were already above the law?
She seemed to have gotten his message, Fujiko stood up and walked towards him.
“Like I said, marry me.” Her palm touched his cheek. “Pretty please?”
“The more I think it over, the less it makes sense.”
“What if I told you the owner of this mansion has a friend who likes to keep serious tabs on me?”
Goemon knew his face occasionally lacked expression, his head however was a fast stream of mental magic, he mostly thought how he felt rather than expressing it. His mind never forgot the Fujiko that was in that snowy french cabin with him. Her sunken in expression, body always crumpled on either the couch or a bed, as if she had spent hundreds of years replaying that feeling of isolation.
For memories that weren’t even hers.
He never wanted to see her like that ever again. After she caught him up on the rest of the details, he vowed to himself to never let her be put in a position like that ever again. Fujiko Mine ceases to exist without her personal identity.
People keeping tabs on Fujiko was normal, expected nowadays with the boost of modern social media, people kept their deft fingers on the pulses of Lupin and Fujiko, and had a fair amount to say about them. Goemon didn’t use any of these apps but Lupin had a habit of reading hate comments in the middle of dinner.
Though just pointing that out was Goemon knowing that Fujiko was getting him to specifically think about that snowy prison.
She trusted him enough to have her hand in marriage, but he’s sure she’s planning something, unclear if she just wants to screw him over or she feels the threat of this ‘millionaire’s friend’ creeping over her shoulders.
But it might just destroy them, he’ll have to protect whatever he can.
“My honour is your honour.” Goemon said.
☾
They slipped into the crowds, some inexplicable weight lifted off of Fujiko’s shoulders. She fluttered through the streets, bouncing between tiny spaces in the crowded streets like a moth hovering from light to light.
She reached across the space between them, her index finger locked with the base of his. Goemon could not stop thinking about what in the hell he had gotten himself into.
☾
At intermittent times, Goemon relayed the question again and again, Would you like to explain yourself? Each time, Fujiko had a convenient excuse to dodge it. They were still at the mansion so Lupin may hear and try to get in on it. He wanted her to discuss heist plans yet they were in public, they were crammed into business class and obviously he just had to wait till they got to Fujiko’s hotel room. But he was already on the plane, and he could not purge himself out of this, maybe if it was Lupin, perhaps Jigen if he was desperate, but not Fujiko. He felt some kind of terrible, boyish attachment to her because he met her before he met the other two. Fujiko was his first step into the real world. And on everything that was sacred, she’s beautiful. It was hard to say no to his primal instincts.
And while there were a few more…trifling…processes than imagined, getting married in Las Vegas was ridiculously easy. The last time he was here, he helped Lupin launder five million from a popular motor racing event. He served as the front line defense for the heist, Lupin’s lawyer and eye witness to him definitely not forging the betting tickets.
Remind him to not get roped into playing anymore white collar roles…
Now he was back here, making one of the clumsiest decisions of his life. He supposes that Las Vegas was the place to do it. They said nothing on the flight, Goemon passed the time with whatever in flight movie he could get his hands on, no matter what the quality was. He noticed his fiancee’s eyes flicker occasionally and linger on his screen, watching the subtitles, but she’d notice him, and turn her head away to the dark window that had nothing but murky clouds and the Atlantic.
In Paris, they had dropped by the hideout, hours apart, to collect only essentials and write as conceiving a note as humanly possible.
I have once again realised the poisonous spit of material objects. Goodbye.
Or in Fujiko’s case, a text, which Goemon would have done if not for keeping up with his lie.
Lupin~ The cramps are pretty bad. I'm gonna vacation in the Bahamas to get better, surfing and pina colada’s are better than that decades old couch! See you soon, lover.
That note was going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
Fujiko stood a stones throw from him now, in the middle of Harry Reid, waiting for him to finish getting pat down. Over the years they had a number of work arounds for Zantetsuken at airports, each one more ridiculous than the last, although a concoction that makes the blade look and feel like plastic was probably the dumbest yet most effective one.
Just as the thought ended, he was free to go. Goemon turned to her, and she gestured her head to find a taxi. As Goemon caught up to her.
“You’re gonna have to smile a lot.” She commented, the doors outside opening to the neverending sea of neon lights. Bright from where he was standing, incandescent to the moon.
“You’re a good actress.” He replied, taking her small suitcase off of her. He was no gentleman, but he was playing along.
She rolled her eyes and huffed. “Fine, but you’ll need a suit.”
He thought about a lot of things he needed: A hotel room, a shower, food, a wedding ring. Maybe he needed that suit.
As Vegas geared for an endless night of pleasure, the streets started to flood with people, Goemon leaned down close to Fujiko’s ear. “And the officiant?”
“Prebooked.”
He backed away. He couldn’t decide whether he was anxious or excited from the way his stomach did a flip. He would have quipped about the circumstances, hiring an officiant before securing a suit for him, but the creases on Fujiko’s forehead told him to leave it at the door. Blind faith in her. A row of taxis rolled in, she jumped in the first she saw, Goemon tailed dutifully and ignored the driver’s request to put Fujiko’s luggage in the boot of the car.
Fujiko responded to all of the small talk from the driver, even as the radio played the worst pop songs Goemon’s ever heard, even whilst he sulked in the back seat with only her bag between them. Traffic started to get bad, the driver turned up the radio.
She held his hand suddenly, raising their togetherness high enough so it’s visible on the driver's rearview mirror. Her ring finger held a beautiful, shiny, and definitely stolen ring. Probably from her personal collection.
“If he wins big tonight, he’s promised to marry me.” Fujiko said with her gleaming fake smile, the one where it didn’t reach her eyes fully so that was Goemon’s decades long hint of when she was scheming against him
The driver laughed, as if he hadn’t heard that enough for a thousand lifetimes. “Well good luck then.”
☾
Goemon wasn’t even sure what casino he was in when he walked inside. Fujiko had taken the reins, but he felt stifled and he wasn’t one to want to be in her way anyhow. So when Fujiko’s shoulders eased and she stopped scrutinizing every single vegas light, Goemon tested it. He beelined for the bar, not having any spending money to blow on slots, he could at least curb his enthusiasm with a stiff beverage.
“You’re not gonna want to be sober for this.” She said, ordering a glass of something for herself, and a cup of sake for Goemon. This was the first bribe.
“Is liquid courage that important? I still don’t understand, you don’t even love me.”
“I like you enough, is that not important for the ball and chain?”
Goemon sucked down the sake like a shot.
“Give me antifreeze.”
The bartender cocked an eyebrow at him and he corrected himself to whiskey, and was served aptly.
“When’s the ceremony?”
“Tonight.”
“Clever girl.” He nearly said it with the dryness that would make one cough. His frown on his resting bitch face deepened. He sucked down some of his drink, burning the back of his throat like a lit cigarette. “Midnight for Cinderella?”
Fujiko placed her hand on top of his, looking him in the eyes. “Ten to ten.”
Goemon tapped his phone screen, eight thirty. And no text from either Lupin or Jigen. He shouldn’t be surprised but he would have liked for them to put two and two together.
“Goemon…” she leaned closer, continuing in a low voice, “no one expects people who marry in vegas to stay married.”
He switched their positions, his hand now on top of hers. “Then why here?”
“Because it’s fast.”
☾
He loitered with her, she offered to take him into the casino to get his mind off of it all, but Goemon rejected her, somehow politely despite liquid courage. He couldn’t feel the sake but a twinge of the whiskey by now. It felt gluttonous to drink on Fujiko’s dime for once. Her stiff body language meant that she didn't really take to her plans being changed. She agreed to a walk with him, despite the hustle and bustle. Briskly venturing from street to alleyway and wherever, Goemon never realised how awful he was at killing time with others. Fujiko left him nothing to carry the conversation with - neither are particularly fond of America. When he couldn’t take it any more, he looked up at the sky. The night was young, awful, and starless.
Goemon swallowed and stroked the butt of Zantetsuken’s hilt.
“This isn’t working,” Fujiko sighed, “Let’s just go back to the hotel.”
And he started to walk in the opposite direction.
☾
Fujiko floated to the room, some five levels above the bar casino. She always got the same kind of room when they were together, large for one but just right for two. On their way back she briefed him (finally) of all of the little things he needed to know when they got to the altar.
Goemon checked the time on the microwave, nine o’five. Fujiko handed him an opaque dress bag, she had another hanging over her forearm.
“Showtime?” He asked.
“You remember where the ceremony is right?”
The address floated in his mind, he nodded.
“Good, because you can’t look at the beautiful bride before her big day.” She floated by him, out of the hotel room. He stood dumbly in the middle of it all, she wasn’t the superstitious type, what the outcome was, he had to wait and see. He unzipped the dress bag and revealed a neat black suit. As the layers of his kimono fell beside, and the tuxedo took over him, the tightness of the fabric laid bare how trapped he was. At least the palm of Fujiko’s hand was warm and soft. It may crush him later but it feels safe for now.
☾
The chapel was halfway between a wedding and a funeral. The few people and dim lights left Goemon needing to dig his heels into the bottom of his loafers, a futile attempt to sink them into the ground. He ran his right hand over his left’s knuckles. Zantetsuken was hidden in the hotel. Aside from him, there was only the officiant and the legally mandatory witnesses. He stood as still as he could, catching his reflection in the stained glass window, he hardly recognised himself in such a sharp cut suit, hair neatly placed in a low ponytail that sat on his shoulder. For her, he pulled himself together - like herding cats - in such a short amount of time.
He rubbed his wrist, the watch covering it, he dared not to look at it, any second could pass and it could be nine fifty.
The dim lights brightened, the doors to the chapel opened. Goemon fixed his already perfect posture, the click of high heels drew him away from reality, fixing on a singular point.
Fujiko.
She wore a smile, a simple white dress, and her hair in a respectable updo. He took comfort in how their wedding outfits suited neither of them, reflecting nothing of their personalities. As she walked down the aisle the long fabric of her dress fluttered against her legs, exposing the very high slit that exposed her left leg to the world. He looked away for a moment, but it was fine for a husband to look at his wife, right? Goemon gulped the thought away.
One of the witnesses took the bouquet of white roses from Fujiko as she crossed the barrier of fantasy to reality. The temptation of running lay across him. No matter how beautiful she was, he couldn’t believe he'd let himself get wrapped around her finger like this, but - but, but, but, he would regret for the rest of his life if he didn’t give protecting her another shot.
She elegantly outstretched her hands, Goemon took them into his. The smallness of them, the softness of her skin all perfectly contrasted against his.
The priest cleared his throat. He spoke in a gravelly, cigarette-loved voice - really akin to the baritone of a church hymn.
“Do you, Mister Goemon Ishikawa, take Miss Fujiko Mine to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health?”
How far Fujiko wanted to go, Goemon couldn’t really imagine the usage of their real names. Her determination was far greater than his. He had been preparing mentally for being another man entirely, but now he was becoming another facade of himself. He had been there in sickness and in health, in deep profound annoyance and attraction. His eyes flickered to the officiant. “I do.”
“So then do you, Miss Fujiko Mine, take Mister Goemon Ishikawa to be your lawfully wedded husband in sickness and in health?”
She smiled, her makeup accentuating the roundness of her eyes and cheeks that make it look like she’s brought it up there. “I do.”
Goemon found himself growing warm at his cheeks, heart thrumming for a moment - curse his boyish dispositions. Curse all of this, it was such a waste of time.
“Then I shall pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
Fujiko’s nails very strategically dug into Goemon’s palms. If he backed out she’d probably kill him. Marrying the person he’s known since forever is the obvious thing to do, but Goemon lived by unconventional standards, or more accurately he was not bound by the constructs of any one society. And neither was she, a free bird in a world full of cages desperate for her to fly into them. He had long since abandoned the one he had, and let her touch his soul with the brazen audacity of her natural self like one of the seven wonders of the world, unabashedly beautiful to the point of overwhelm.
He pressed their foreheads together and without letting the touch linger, he tilted his lips onto hers, putting a soft kiss in their repertoire of lip action. Fujiko timely leaned in and fluttered her eyes shut. The minimal witnesses clapped and cheered, it felt like a prank, but it might as well have been the best one that’s ever happened to him.