Not mine. This is an edited repost from my old
account that I've always been fond of.

"SOMETHING STRANGE"

As the go their separate ways, Fuu encounters something very strange to her.

The dust on the worn path beneath her feet licks at her ankles beneath her kimono, stains her sock a golden brown from the pristine, just-washed white they'd been just a few moments ago. The springtime breeze carries flower petals of pink and yellow on its back, over her head, into the never-ending realm of the blue sky above her. No clouds today. There seemed to be so many a few days ago, when she and her comrades had been so close to their deaths.

She is confused by her own train of thought, because she is thinking of something very unusual and something that she doesn't quite understand in her young, hopeless naivety.

She finds herself thinking of Mugen.

It's strange and weird and countless other things in her mind, that she should think of him now: now that he is finally gone. As she looks over her narrow shoulder, through the curtain of her own dark hair, Fuu can barely make out his lanky figure on the horizon as it moves further and further away from her. Away from her. The words repeat in her head without her meaning for them to, against her will: away from her, away from me. Away from us.

Something aches; a tugging she cannot explain. In her chest – no, in her stomach – no, in her heart. It hurts. It wasn't around when Mugen was with her, not even when she thought he might die just a week ago. It had hurt, of course; she'd been worried sick, shaking and crying quietly in the back of the room, her hands clutching her shoulders so hard that her knuckles had turned pasty white. It had hurt then, but it wasn't like this. Never this bad: this sort of nostalgia.

The fact that she is alone is finally beginning to settle in, and she does not like it at all.

Images in her mind, barging in, unwelcome at first but then she relaxes. Memories flood through her, and she wonders why the nostalgia has already kicked in, when it has been not ten minutes since she last saw him. It's funny and it's sad, and though she feels like crying she's smiling, too.

She remembers.

When Mugen was wounded, lying on a straw mat on the ground, his handsome torso bandaged and mauled from scars that should never have been present in a man who was barely nineteen years old. She had been watching over him all night: praying that he would be alright, that Death would reject him and let him stay with her, for only just a bit longer. She thought then that she wanted him around so that he could continue to help her find her father. Now she realizes that perhaps she wanted him around for different reasons.

She was leaving his side and he grabbed her wrist: tightly, but not so that it pained her. She remembers that his fingers were calloused and rough, but she also remembers that his thumb was caressing her palm.

It was a nice feeling, and she realizes she wants it back.

She remembers Jin. She thought, for a few moments, that she was in love with him, one evening. He is bad at holding his liquor and after a few drinks he was buzzed and had his head in her lap. He said she smelled lovely. She remembers blushing and thanking him, but cannot remember much else about that evening. Just the feeling of his dark, silky hair between her fingertips as she threaded through the tendrils gently and how her heart had pounded so loudly when he'd dared to offer her the slightest of half-smiles.

It is strange, to be remembering things she tried to banish from her mind. Memories and thoughts and what-if situations plague her heart and her soul and she swallows thickly, feeling her eyes tear up. Jin, who was so different from Mugen; how can she love them both?

But she finds that she does: she does, she does, she does. She loves them both with all her heart, and as they walk their separate ways she feels the muscle tearing into two pieces: one goes with each man.

Come back to me, please come back to me.

Fuu stops walking, turns quickly, her eyes welling up even as she tells them silently to remain arid and dry, like the land around her. Her eyes scan the horizon. They sting, but she doesn't mind much. She's been crying so much lately that it's become an almost regular thing for her. She looks for them, but they're so hard to see. Mugen is a speck on her right. Jin is barely visible on the road to the left.

Her heart wrenches in her chest.

God. She loves them. But she cannot go after one of them, for leaving the other would be just as heartbreaking. She bites her lip, wipes her tears away with the heel of her hand. Looking down, Fuu turns and continues to walk along the path.

- - -

As they go their separate ways, Jin encounters something very strange to him.

His small eyes, behind the unnecessary glasses perched upon the handsome bridge of his nose, are closed as he walks slowly down the road, alert although he seems unaware of his surroundings. Jin is always so alert, after all. He was always an observant man before, preferring to watch instead of speak, preferring to take things in instead of walk carelessly by them.

Since traveling with Fuu, though, he has learned to be even more aware. She has such a habit of falling into trouble, no matter where they find themselves going. She was the one who started this whole thing, and Jin realizes that, strangely enough, he has been battling for her all along this hectic journey the three of them were taking.

He thought for a long time that it was all for himself, but he has saved her countless times, with and without Mugen's help. He would never have saved her for his own personal gain. After all, what could be gained by helping some scrawny teenage girl? Perhaps a feeling of redemption in himself for all the gruesome acts he has committed in the past?

Jin was never a man of much conscience, so he knows that he fought for Fuu. Perhaps a bit for Mugen as well, but mostly it was for her.

He wonders why, even though the answer is obvious. He does not want to believe it, though, and so he searches for another answer. He was attached to her, yes. She was a friend. A friend.

So if she was nothing more than a friend, Jin wonders why his chest – no, his stomach – no, his throat – aches now like it does for her, and not for Mugen. After all, Mugen was a friend too, was he not? He was and is a friend and he is walking away, too, down the dusty road in the opposite direction, away from these two he's spent so long with. Months, years? Jin cannot keep track of the time he has been at Fuu's side now. Mugen was—no, he is—a friend.

But this ache; this horrible pain that nearly blinds him as he walks down the road, it is all for Fuu.

He does not want to believe that he loves her. It would complicate things for him far more than he would ever like. Jin is a man who prefers to live in simplicity, and while he cannot deny that he is great at fighting he does not enjoy it nearly as much as he once did. It is a source of pride, but not a source of pleasure. He wishes to live in simplicity, in control of himself and his own emotions.

Loving her would compromise all of that – he's noticed, in his relatively limited experience, that romanticism almost always ends in a less than desirable way – but in the depths of his heart Jin knows that he loves her. If he didn't love her, this ache would subside far quicker. It would be gone by now, and she would be but an afterthought: another in a long line of women who have wanted to understand him, but whom he has never allowed to do so.

Was she different? Is she different?

Is he letting her walk away?

His chest hurts. His head throbs. Nothing feels right to him and he finds that it's actually hard to breath. As always, he maintains his composure: ever stoic, ever in control. Inside, his chest contracts and clenches and constricts around his heart. He wants this to stop. It didn't ache this way when Fuu was around.

Jin turns, slowly. His feet scuff the dirt road beneath them and the dust rises to meet the bottom of his kimono. Mugen is hardly visible: he can make out the pink in Fuu's kimono as she walks away. He blinks for a few moments, watching her grow smaller and smaller in the distance, before taking a step off the road: diagonally, towards her.

He knows she can make this stop.

- - -

As they go their separate ways, Mugen encounters something very strange to him.

He thinks at first that it is hunger, because his stomach is aching like it does when he hasn't been fed in a few days. But he realizes that this ache is not the same: it's something different, something more severe, like being stabbed repeatedly in the belly. Like he hasn't encountered that enough in the past few days.

He wonders if a wound has opened up. Knowing Fuu's the only one for a few miles who can sew it back up again, he yanks up his shirt, searching for blood. The only thing he finds is the caked remnants of his life fluid around badly done stitches, although the stitches do their job, to their credit.

Mugen frowns. It doesn't make sense. He has just eaten this morning: rice patties and some egg thing that Fuu cooked up before they departed from the home of the late Sunflower Samurai, the three of them, together for the last time. Thinking that, the feeling in his gut – like the coiling of his intestines or something equally gruesome – intensifies by tenfold, and he would double over if a pretty girl did not pass by at that very moment.

He feels sick to his stomach, though he does not know why. Were the eggs bad? Did Fuu cook an awful meal again? They tasted alright, didn't they? And she ate them too. He glances over his shoulder to see if his two former comrades are in the pain he is. They are specks on the horizon, but they are getting smaller and smaller. Apparently the both of them are just fine.

Unfair, Mugen thinks to himself.

He continues to walk down the road, watching his feet kick up dust along the road. The golden-brown clouds dance around his skinny ankles, itch at his malnourished calves. He looks back up, in front of him. Miles and miles of road ahead. So many places he can see, so many things that he can do now that he's finally free of those two. A man of his own again. Independent and free.

And yet, this sickness. What is this sickness? It's unrecognizable, but somehow familiar. Not nostalgia. It's in his stomach – no, his chest – no, his throat. He hates it already. Why won't it go away?

Fuu would probably know what it was. Or, if she didn't, she could find someone who did. She always knows the most obscure facts. A ditsy little thing, but what she knows she knows well. He's never met a woman so determined and so constantly ready to bounce back from every evil that falls on her. So many things have happened to her, just during the time that he has been with her, and yet she's always so cheerful.

Thinking about her makes the ache worse.

What is this crap? Surely he can't miss her already. He's never missed anyone: human life, it's so inconsequential. There are girls for having sex with when he's too frustrated to do anything else, girls to bend over and have a good time with until he's satisfied. There are men for fighting and cooking his food and causing conflicts with because that's just what he does. But he does not value men and women as actual human beings; he never has. It is simply not in his nature.

So why this feeling?

Mugen wonders why the memories hit him now, like the dozens of explosives that nearly blew him into oblivion hardly a week ago. He remembers the feel of her skin, the smell of her hair. She is soft and he likes it. She's still nothing but a girl, and the way she acts makes it even more obvious, but from time to time he did allow himself to think of her as a woman. There were curves beneath that kimono, hidden from his sight. He'd tease her about it every now and again, get her to blush in embarrassment because they both knew that she'd never been with a man before.

He remembers touching her hand in a barely-conscious haze, remembers the flush of her cheeks. She is so very alive. He could nearly feel her pulse in her hand, throbbing quicker as his thumb traced over her lifeline. It seemed so short then. He wonders how much longer she's got; she's cheated death even more than he has, and he knows that no matter who you are you can only get away with that so many times.

He remembers thinking that she was dead, and realizes that's why this sickness seems so familiar. He's felt it before: he felt it when he thought that Fuu was dead.

Mugen understands, but he doesn't want to. He shouldn't do this. He shouldn't feel this. Nineteen years old and already love-struck? It's a horrible situation to be in, but in spite of his thoughts he looks over his shoulder again, towards the central road Fuu started walking down not ten minutes ago. He can barely see her: a speck of pink against a clear azure sky, flecks of gold glinting off of her skin when he tilts his head a certain way.

His eyes find another figure, moving towards her, and though he can make out no features he knows that it's Jin. Mugen sighs, looks to his feet. He thinks that he's become weak, thinks that he's become stupid, but in spite of it all he too turns and begins to move towards that pink speck on the horizon.

- - -

They belong together, the three of them, and as Mugen and Jin reach Fuu and they see the tears in her eyes they silently accept it.