disclaimer: not mine

notes: does this pairing even have a fandom? come say hi! this has been one of my otps for a long time.

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"Did you ever have parents?"

The question hung between them for a heartbeat. Fuu kept her eyes lowered at the skewered fish she was roasting over the fire. The moon was bright overhead, and the forest was filled with the chirping of night cicadas. It had been three days since the job with Mukuro's pirates—three days since he stumbled along the very line between life and death, felt the pull of ancient gods in his dreams, and survived.

Mugen growled irritably from his slouched position on the ground. "Look, girlie, I told you all you need to know about me. The rest's got nothin' to do with you."

Fuu exhaled long and slow, pressing her small lips together. "It's just—Koza told me about Ryukkyu. It…sounded like it was just the three of you against the world."

He sat up abruptly, pulling a groan at the jabs of pain at his midsection. "We all got ghosts from our past, princess. I don't go around asking you about your sunflower dude, or Glasses about his sensei. So do me a solid and stop pokin' around in my business." He grabbed his sword by its strap and slung it over his shoulder. "And don't talk about Koza. She ain't none of your business either." There was something so angry, so furious in his voice that made Fuu wonder, not for the first time, what exactly the Ryukkyu girl had meant to him.

Mugen moved to stand, but ended up sinking back to the ground with a string of curses, one arm around the injuries he'd gotten in the explosion. Fuu's mother would have washed her mouth out with soap for using language like that.

"You moron," she muttered. "We did too much traveling than was good for you, didn't we? You could've spoken up."

"This is nothin'," he snorted. "Been through a lot worse."

Fuu rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Let me see, anyway."
Surprisingly, Mugen complied. She supposed that meant he really was in pain, if he wasn't too proud to let her help him. Her breath caught in her throat as her fingers brushed his arm—his skin radiated heat. A fever. Unwrapping his bandages, she saw that his burns had turned a sickly shade of reddish-purple, a sure sign of infection.

"You moron," Fuu repeated, but she couldn't keep the tone of worry out of her voice. Hands shaking, she grabbed her knapsack, sorting through until she found what she needed. "This is why you should've stayed in bed instead of chasing after Koza and Shiren! This is why you're supposed to let on when your injuries are more serious than me and Jin think!" She produced a small jar of balm her mother had taught her to make, one that she saved for emergencies because the ingredients were so rare to find. "I swear, one day you're going to get yourself killed, and I'm not always going to be there to help you!"

She stopped. Mugen had his face turned away from her, lips pressed together in a deep frown. He didn't tell her to shut up. He didn't call her annoying. He was silent, and Fuu sighed.

"This is going to sting," she warned softly. She dipped two fingers in the balm and started applying it to his wounds. Mugen's fingers dug into the grass beneath him, and he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.

("Talk to him, love," her mother says, placing her cool hands on Fuu's shoulders. Fuu is eleven years old, and there has just been a forest fire in the outlying farms of their home village. The wounded are carried into their house by the dozens—men and women and children, bleeding, groaning, screaming. The air smells of smoke and blood, and Fuu is not sure than she will ever cleanse the taste of ash from her lungs.

"Tell him a story," her mother continues as Fuu hesitates before the dying man on the table in front of her. "It gives him something to concentrate on other than the pain.)

She drew in a breath. "When I was five, slavers raided the village where my family and I lived." Mugen eyed her warily, and she smoothed more balm over the worst part of his burn, so severe that the skin had turned pure white. He flinched. "A lot of people were taken that day. The ones who were strong enough to fight were killed. The slavers came to my house, and my mother was ready to defend us with a kitchen knife." Fuu smiled at the memory. "I remember thinking that she was the bravest person in the world. That was when my father showed up. He was a sight, swooping in to fight them, outnumbered ten to one. He killed them. All of them. I can remember it so clearly—he dropped his sword and scooped me up in one arm, then pulled my mother close with the other. But I still…I still can't remember his face."

She blinked, having been paying more attention to the story than her work. She retied the bandage around Mugen's wounds and put away the now empty jar. Mugen was watching her intently, the firelight glinting in his dark eyes. Feeling a sudden wetness on her cheeks, Fuu realized she was crying.

"Can't remember what she looked like, either," Mugen said roughly.

Fuu brushed the tears from her cheeks quickly. "What? Who?"

"My mother."

She laid down on the grass next to him, putting her hands behind her head and looking

up at the stars. Mugen had never shared anything like this with her, or with Jin, or with anyone, maybe. She was hesitant to question him further. "And…your father?"

He snorted. "I'm from Ryukkyu, girlie," he snapped bitterly. "Do you think love exists

there? Some bastard prolly raped her. All I know is she never wanted me."

"Mugen, I'm sure that's not—"

"Oh, it's true, princess. If she'd wanted me, do you think she'd have hit me the way she always did? You don't know the first thing about it." Fuu turned her face away. He didn't say that there had been good things about his mother, too. He didn't say that he remembered her scent, salty like the spray of the ocean, and that he remembered the soft tickling of her hair against his skin. He didn't say that she used to sing him to sleep, her voice very sad as she recaptured Ainu tales from far to the north. He didn't say that he missed her.

He didn't need to. She already understood.

Fuu slipped a small hand under Mugen's calloused palm and laced their fingers together. There was a tightening in his throat, and he turned his gaze towards the stars.

For once, he did not push her away.

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