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They stood and watched it burn. The smell was so like a campfire and so very not. Popping resin blew like sudden cannon-shot and Fuu jumped a mile in the air, at least the first ten times. When the roof collapsed, the walls slanting back down to the earth where they belonged – she had gotten over the shock of the noise and the heat. Her father was never leaving the shack again. He too was returning back to the earth where he belonged.
Fuu Kasumi lost herself in her thoughts about the differences between those who belonged to Earth and those who belonged to the Heavens. The two beings standing guard behind her in silent communion surely were not of this Earth. No one could cheat Death so many times, yet there they stood, still very mortal and very blood-shod, bandages with fresh red stains showing the cost of their ramrod-stiff vigil.
She was touched and if she could feel anything but dull weariness and blazing heat – Fuu would have thanked them both. She really would have. She wanted to. They deserved it, for a job very well done. Bodyguards the likes of which even God had not seen!
When the blaze became a smolder and the embers only popped with half-hearted complaint, she drew up her incredible exhaustion and turned her back on the wreckage. Now that Fuu had seen all this, the world could never be the same size again.
Walking slowly back down the scant trail, Fuu fought for something, anything to come out of her eyes. She could only sniff through her dry nose and pretend to show the pain in her heart to the world around her. Her escorts made little sound – even the pirate's getta were muffled by the leaf mould and for once he didn't bother to scuffle his feet just to get on her last nerve. The ronin's deadly stillness, even in motion, was a constant – he did not allow for change. They traveled down the cliffside in silence, for once.
The men ate in an uneasy silence – they had unfinished business and it could not wait forever. Wounds and dressings could not stop honor and pride, but somehow, for now – there was an uneasy stand-still. They could not move on, there could be no going back. The world could never be the same size again.
Fuu picked at her rice and ate very little. Everything she put in her mouth turned to ash and finally, the last straw was drawn on her grief. Take everything away from Fuu but her love and joy of food! Great whooping sobs began to rattle out of her as she quickly turned her back on her companions to hide her shameful caterwauling. The ronin's spectacles slid down his aquiline nose in surprise and the pirate spooned a mouthful of rice onto his lap in shock. Grief is poison and Fuu Kasumi squeezed as much out of her as she could, gasping and choking on it as she wept. When finally, the silence returned, her sniffles winding down to a low stutter, easily hidden in her maiden's sleeve, Fuu found herself on her side, cheek pressed to the cool, wet boards of the ramshackle hut that was theirs for the time… the time being.
She felt a warm body behind her and too exhausted to be ashamed or untrue, wiggled back against it. She felt the pirate's stubbled chin against her neck and to her utmost shock, she felt his lips there next. Looking up in the dim evening light on the shack, Fuu saw the ronin slowly unbinding his hair. He looked at her with eyes full of understanding, and warning – they seemed to speak of an unending loneliness, one she was just beginning to understand. When the pirate behind her buried his nose in her hair and blew hot breath down the neck of her kimono, she jumped. Strong tattooed arms slipped around her and drew her firmly against the body cupping her own.
Fuu found her voice for the first time in a long while. "No." she murmured, her voice tear-stained and hoarse at first.
"Yes.", the man behind her countered.
The ronin had moved in to kneel before her as well. He looked down his long nose at her and didn't smile. "Yes." He echoed in his cold, liquid voice.
"No…" Fuu tried one more time, grasping onto a blue-dyed wrist about her waist.
When she felt the pirate behind her move and noticed a hand was not around her any longer, she wondered if the hint was finally getting through. She still felt poisonous, thin – like ink spread over too much silk and the transparency was like a cold chill. She would never be warm in her heart again.
The ronin was untying his kimono and leaving it open to his bare, scarred chest, he lay down before her, trapping her against his enemy, who was slowly but deftly undoing her obi. The pirate's deep wild eyes met his own and a truce was called, for this moment. There was something yet that needed protected and saved.
When the whip-thin ronin had arranged himself ever-gracefully before the one-time waitress sweating out fear and hopelessness like a miasma, he began to slowly open her up. Fuu drew a shocked, quavering breath hard through her nose at the feeling of a man's hands finding their way into her kimono. The hand attached to a blue-dyed wrist felt gingerly over her breasts, pulling down the binding to caress her soft skin with a gentleness she would have never guess the rouge possessed. As she opened her mouth to say something, anything – one last shred of pled sanity! – the warrior before her pulled her kimono open and kissed her, hard. His tongue silenced her and took all the protest from her utterly. He licked at her, running calloused palms over her exposed stomach and then dipped down into her rapidly dampening curls. She hiccupped a groan when the man behind her nipped at one ear and drew one of her legs over his hard hip, allowing the man before her an even easier access to the very core of her misery-laden body.
Fuu found she was languid with the desire she had tamped down over long months of traveling and the dregs of her sorrow still made her heart squeeze painfully – even when the outlaw at her back released himself against her, rubbing something long and hot against her core. The outlaw at her front still ran his slick fingers through her folds, teasing her with shrill pleasure, but had bent his long, dark predatory head to her cool breasts, teasing her painfully hard nipples with his tongue. She never saw what became of his glasses until she noticed his dark eyes without them, deep like deadly water – so like deadly and deep water. Fuu wanted to drown there; she just wanted the pain to go away and her with it!
Grabbing the ronin's face, she pulled him from his slow worship at her breast to look into his still face. He didn't want to talk to her; he didn't want to answer any questions or give any ridiculous consolations, so the ronin struck hard and fast, watching her eyes squeeze shut when he plunged two long fingers into her hungry pussy. His enemy slid himself against those nimble intruders, gathering her slickness for what was to surely follow.
Fuu never saw the ronin and the pirate count silently to three and flash competing hand gestures – the ronin's eyes narrowed a fraction but he had lost… again – and fair was fair. Pulling, pushing, twisting, the outlaw within her brought her body needful things and strung her out quickly on well-learned pleasure. When Fuu was arching her back, her slippery wet need jamming itself in time to the eager thrust of his fingers, the swordsman withdrew, gave his enemy's cock one hot, slick pump and guided him shamelessly into the girl's shivering body. Fuu wailed out in fulfillment – not knowing until that moment that to counter death and sadness, she needed filled with life and love. Finally, as the rouge pirate behind her slowly broke her and made her anew, the silent ronin who sucked at her breast and slowly fingered her, body and soul back to life, Fuu Kasumi found her voice.
"Mugen… Jin… ah!", she groaned out, grasping the hand of one and the bobbing head of the other and held onto them both for dear life.
"Yes…" one panted out and thrust hard within her, pounding away in his own personal sort to victory. She would not suffer alone. He would do as he willed, and right now that meant loving her, filling her where grief and trauma had drained her dry.
"Yes…" the other whispered into the soft flesh he was warming, one eager mouthful at a time. The chill of loneliness would not consume her, not while he stood guard.
When Fuu let herself admit that she indeed had something to fill the void of her heart, she came with a low moan and thrashed with life for the first time in some many days that once were filled with dead grief. She lay in the arms of her guardians and thought herself well and truly saved.
Once you have seen all this, the world can never be the same size again.