Cynosure:
Serving for guidance or direction.
Sometimes, when a curtain of dark covers the usual sunny sky, and when Mugen and Jin stay up arguing softly—never too loud, so as not to disturb her, but always loud enough that she can make out their words—sometimes, Fuu listens.
She used to ignore them in favor of stargazing, staring up at the vast and silky night clouds, barely visible, and seeing brilliant white stars there; a polka dot canvas. In her younger days, she fancied the idea of plucking one of the little circles from its place, but now she knows that this is not possible, and that if it was, she would forgo the act anyway in fear of disrupting the pattern.
For a few nights every week, Fuu lies awake and thinks about how very much she and Mugen and Jin are like the sky. Their days together are never the same, not with Mugen stirring up trouble, and yet in that exact sense every day is the same. Nothing can change them, because they are intangible and unreachable like the stars, out of grasp to everybody else.
Mugen bothers a lot of people. He breaks things that Fuu has to pay for. He drinks a lot and never pays, telling the waitress (a different one each time) to "put it on his tab". He is the reason Fuu gets kidnapped so often, and yet, he always manages to rescue her. Mugen is Mugen, loud and wildly boisterous and dangerous, and so irresistible it irks her.
Jin likes to keep a low profile. He kills only those who stand in his way, and steals only when he is truly hungry. He keeps Mugen and Fuu on a consistent path, telling them when to turn and when to pretend and when to lie. They follow him blindly, because Jin is, after all, the only way to get to where they're going. Jin is Jin, cool like winter snow at certain times, and burning people like a controlled inferno at other times.
Fuu likes to think that she is the balance between the two. She knows that she causes nearly as many problems as Mugen, what with her gambling addiction and her tendency to piss all the wrong people off. She also knows that Mugen and Jin will always stand there, waiting for her, ready to pull her out of any hell she can concoct. She is like the icing on a cake, sweet and sticky and deliciously pure, like a newborn that only smiles. Fuu is Fuu, soft and tender but rough and assertive…and always the referee, shouting, "stop".
So sometimes she listens, because she is the motherly figure and like any good mother she worries for her boys.
They speak of women from the brothel, and of escape routes, and of fat old men who smoke and sic assassins on them. They speak of how unbearably vague any clues about the sunflower samurai are, and of how they would enjoy nothing more than killing eachother.
Once, and only once, they spoke of Fuu.
She had been on the verge of drifting to sleep, imagining a cool wave of water washing over her, calming and cleansing. She thought of Jin because it was a soothing feeling, but she also thought of Mugen, because water was his birthright, and water was what he was raised on. No land.
She had been losing consciousness, just about to forget her sudden bout of insomnia and let dreams claim her. She had a feeling she would dream of red and blue, of water over fire.
But she did not dream that night, because she did not sleep that night.
Fuu lay awake listening to them whisper careful words about her, and feeling their reproachful gazes on her stilled body. It was odd that either of them should act so timidly even when they thought she slept. It was odd, because Jin's movements were fluid in battle, practiced; and because Mugen never planned anything, never regretted anything.
Mugen said that perhaps she was not so flat-chested, and very quietly he boasted how well she could handle a drink. She was flattered and annoyed, but not angry. She appreciated the truth, wholly and fully.
Jin said that perhaps even after they found the samurai who smelled of sunflowers, perhaps he would stay with Fuu. She might need him again, he told Mugen. It was pleasing to think that he had considered her safety, and a warmth surged through her veins upon the realization that maybe he did not find her so troublesome…maybe he did not mind.
She had tried hard not to move that night, not to squirm in her cot. She'd wanted more, more of their beautiful melancholy together, voices soft and for once, not jagged or uncouth.
They only managed to hold her interest for so long, because she woke up the next morning remembering seeing stars before slumber, and hearing the echo of their last words in her ears, hearing expired speech when she should hear them packing camp up.
The fire had burned out during the night, and their cots were being rolled for carry.
They ate that day, Mugen caused a scene in town that day, and she and Jin restored a peaceful balance that day.
In times like these, when Fuu wakes to find that there never was a proper camp, when Fuu does not see a burned out fire—when she does not see her boys stuffing things into bags and hoisting them onto their backs—in times like these, Fuu still hears them.
They are ghosts lingering behind glass in her mind, glass that she thinks will shatter at any time. Their words linger and linger, taunting her until their individual voices run together and drown out everything else, and until there is nothing else.
Sometimes, when a curtain of dark covers the usual sunny sky, and when the crickets chirp but she does not hear them…sometimes Fuu cries because things are not as they once were, and because the 'peaceful balance' she worked so hard to maintain had finally been broken.
Sometimes she wishes the glass in her mind would break, and she hopes against all odds that a piece of the imaginary glass will lodge itself into the part of her brain that controls memories, destroying them forever.
But then she remembers that the ocean is somewhere nearby, and she thinks about how it will be stained red when the sun rises—red and blue, Mugen and Jin.
She pinpoints it and sits at the water's edge, listening to the rush of waves twisting upwards and falling and scattering; dancing like Mugen and Jin did with swords, ruthlessly. She listens to the waves, truly listens to them, and realizes that though her boys are so very far away, they are closer to her now than they have been in a long, long while.
(Fuu doesn't stray far from the ocean. Not anymore.)Fin.