The Time I Spent With You

Rated: Teen for romance (Jack/Ashi).

Summary: At every moment, Ashi expected to fade out of existence, but for some reason fate had chosen to give her a little more time with Jack. She was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Disclaimer: Samurai Jack is created by Genndy Tartakovsky.

LES: This story is based on the fact that at the very least Jack and Ashi had perhaps a year living together in the past before she faded out of existence in the finale. This is judged by the fact that Jack's teachers had the time to travel to Japan for Jack and Ashi's wedding, a feat that would have taken months in the medieval world. Oh, and I'm new to the fandom, so I don't know if what I'm about to say will be grounds for getting raked over the coals, but for this story I've decided to make up Jack's true name. I know that she calls him Jack just before she fades, but I find it hard to believe that she could have lived in the palace for months without someone (especially Jack's parents) saying his true name. The name I have chosen for the purpose is Masahiko, which means "just prince".

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Both Jack and Ashi ran out of Aku's tower as fast as they could, Jack keeping a firm grip on Ashi's hand. With the other hand, he held the sleeve of his gi up in front of his mouth to block out the dust and smoke as explosions began to tear the structure apart.

"We must get out now!" Jack yelled. He could hear the floors above starting to collapse down towards them.

Ashi narrowed her eyes in determination and raised her hand. Aku was being destroyed down to his very essence, but it seemed that she still had some of the evil demon's powers within her. She turned her hand into a large claw and tore down one of the walls leading them outside. Without wasting another second, they both leapt out of the building, fell a fair distance, before landing hard on the ground.

They barely took the time to catch their breath before they began running again, away from the tower as it exploded and collapsed. Finally, there was one last massive explosion, which lifted the running couple off their feet and flung them away from the fireball that engulfed what was once Aku's lair. Thankfully, years of combat experience let them keep their sense of balance and they both landed on their feet, skidding and turned around to face the destruction as Aku's tower was swallowed up by the earth, never to be seen again.

For a couple of moments, they could only stare in wonder and shock. Aku, the being single-handedly responsible for leading the world into ruin, and almost destroying both of their lives, was obliterated. After all these years… my quest is at an end. Jack thought in amazement.

But his attention was drawn towards the woman standing at his side when she cried out and collapsed down in the dirt. "Ashi!" He crouched down next to her, staring at her with concern. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing..." She answered slowly. "Nothing's wrong. I'm fine. I… I felt Aku leave me!"

Jack sighed with relief. Seeing Ashi being controlled by Aku like a puppet had been one of the most horrific things he had ever seen in his fight against Aku, and knowing that Aku was gone and could never do that to Ashi or anyone else again brought peace to Jack's heart that he'd been living without for decades. "Aku is gone. He'll never hurt anyone else again." He said, pulling Ashi into an embrace.

Ashi allowed herself to be lost in his warm embrace. But the tiniest part of her kept wondering… why am I still here? As much as she denied it to herself, Aku really was her biological father. And now the demon had been destroyed in Jack's past, thousands of years before she had been conceived. Was it possible… would she be able to exist even without Aku?

But that seemed very unlikely. She couldn't truly rid herself of her father any more than anyone else could rid themselves of their father's DNA. Aku was a fundamental part of her existence.

Perhaps… perhaps there was a chance that the timeline had branched instead of being over-written? After all, a different version of Jack had just been sent into that future. If that future didn't exist anymore… was he dead now? And if he had died how could he have then come back and…

Even more than the mental battle for the right of her body against Aku, these thoughts were the one giving her the biggest headache. She was not a scientist and therefore could not even begin to speculate on the nature of time. And the scientists in Jack's time… well to be as nice as possible about it, a majority of them still had a foot in the dark ages. So there were no answers forthcoming from them.

The only thing that Ashi knew was that her existence was not certain anymore. And if she was suddenly going to fade away from existence, she would spend every moment she could giving Jack all the happiness he deserved.

Ashi pulled out of his embrace to meet his eyes, fully intending to tell him that it was possible that her days were numbered, and that there was no way she could know how long she had left if she was going to get torn away from him. But the words died in her throat when she met his eyes.

She remembered, when she was on the verge of giving up and allowing Aku to own her mind and body, she remembered hearing Jack yell that he loved her. And when she gazed into his eyes now, she could see that while the words had been screamed in desperation, he had meant them.

Aku was defeated, Jack was back in his own time, and his people and family were waiting for him like he had never left. He was happy, giving her one of the biggest smiles she had ever seen on him. How could she dash that happiness? It wasn't like life was a certainty for anyone. Hell, as a warrior, Jack could get killed in a battle tomorrow and all her worries about possibly fading away and leaving him behind would come to nothing. No one could be certain what tomorrow would bring. But Ashi knew that she was here now, in Jack's arms. And at once she knew that she didn't intend to waste a single moment.

Their kiss on the alien spaceship had seemed a lifetime ago, but their mouths met once again with surprising ease. Neither of them even noticed as the last traces of Aku on her body evaporated away, leaving her in the prison frock that she'd taken from the spaceship.

The kiss seemed to last for hours, with only the sounds of soft breathing and moans coming from the couple. But the reality was that only ten minutes passed before night began to fall and Jack and Ashi reluctantly pulled away from each other, out of breath and with swollen lips.

After a moment, Jack reverted back towards being shy and nervous around her. He blushed when he met her eyes, and then quickly stood up and offered her his hand. She accepted his hand and they stood up, and took one last look at the remains of Aku's tower.

"Are you ready to go back home?" Ashi asked.

For quite a while, Jack did not answer, and then he sighed and turned to face Ashi with a smile. "Yes. I'm ready to finally go home." Ashi smiled in return and linked her arm around his. Jack blushed once again, but relaxed under her touch. Without another word or another glance back, they began to trek away from Aku's devastated tower and back towards where Jack's home used to stand.

What Ashi did not realize was that there was a reason that she did not fade away the instant Aku was destroyed. But that did not mean that she was completely safe. Time is a dimension, a dimension bound so tightly to normal space that it was often impossible to tell the two apart. Everything moving through the fabric of space-time was bound to the same laws of physics. In this case, the speed of light.

Information cannot travel from one end of time to the other instantaneously unless one employed a wormhole. Aku's destruction had caused a shift in the future history of the world, but there had been no wormhole or time portal involved to take that information straight into the future.

A quantum shift was traveling through the fabric of space-time, changing the entire future history of the world as it went. But it would take time: months, if not a year, for the information of Aku's destruction to make its way forward in time to the moment when Aku had visited the Cult of Aku and given them a cup of his essence, thus enabling the High Priestess to drink of his essence and bare Aku's daughters.

The shift was slower than instant, but it was still happening and the progress of the quantum shift could not be stopped. It would eventually wipe Ashi out of existence. All that could be done is for her to live life the way she saw fit until that moment happened.

LES: So the point of this is to basically try to come up with a reason why Ashi didn't immediately fade away once Aku was destroyed. I know that's a big plot hole in the whole "she fades away thing", so I hope that I came up with something at least a little believable.