Disclaimer: I don't own Samurai Champloo. Wouldn't want to. I'd sooner give it back than butcher it.
A/N: Just as short as my last one. An introspective piece on Fuu.
Six years. Six years since their goodbyes.
As it turned out, she eventually found her sunflower samurai. Not the way she expected to, but she couldn't argue with results. Their quest was over, and Fuu settled her business with the man, not without the help of her two trusted companions, of course.
She didn't want to think about that.
With Jin's and Mugen's end of the bargain completed, they were "free to kill each other", as Fuu put it bluntly in a painfully sad tone laced with a ribbon of slight amusement. A grin split across Mugen's usual scowl, making his facial features appear almost predatory. Jin remained impassive as always, though Fuu swore she saw the slightest slip of an upward tug at the corner of his mouth.
Tears began to well up, boiling behind her eyes. Her vision was blurring, and Mugen's grin was growing fuzzier with each second. With the slightest of cracked smiles, she turned on her heel, refusing to allow them to watch her become a crybaby at such a crucial transition of their lives. At least, it was crucial to her life.
Besides, she wished to commit to memory the image of their faces focused on her, not their backs as they walked down their own separate roads.
The heated liquid boiled with heartbreak as it trailed down her slowly flushing cheeks, over the nape of her neck and the hollow of her throat, and into her cherry kimono. She made no motion to wipe them away. After all they had been through, after all the wonders and horrors of reality pressed into her mind, she would not let them see such weakness over a simple farewell.
But it wasn't simple, was it? The voice of her conscious nagged her as she recalled that moment in her history.
It was the last she saw of them. Whether or not they slaughtered each other, she didn't know. She knew she would never see them again, but a very small part of her, a part of her past that survived through her drastic metamorphosis from a persistent, crybaby little girl, to a passionate, strong-willed young woman, clung to the hope that she would someday eventually see them walking down the dirt path to her humble home, both oblivious and bickering with each other as she remembered.
It was this miniscule shred of hope that gave her the patience to wait, and watch the path with every passing day.
It had only been six years.
But to her, it was already an eternity.
