Woohoo! New chapter. A bit short, but I'll make it up with the next one.
Chapter Four: Secret Someones
Where all the rolling rollers roll
And all the secret someones go
And all the roving rovers ramble
Down my back, down my track…
"She lied."
Mugen groggily looked up at Jin, who stood over him, hands on his hips, glowering. "Wha? Damnit, nag, I'm sleepin'."
"Fuu lied to us."
Mugen forced himself to wake up. "About what?"
"I don't know."
Mugen looked at Jin skeptically. "Then what are you talking about?"
"She hesitated."
Mugen stared.
"When I asked her about Kiyoko. She hesitated. Fuu only hesitates before speaking when she's lying. Otherwise, she's instantly filling the air with words."
Mugen thought on it, but before he could form a reply, a noise from outside the door had him and Jin at their feet, but silent.
"Lee?" Fuu called from the other end of the hall. A murmur acknowledged that call, and small footsteps started past the guest room.
At first, neither Jin nor Mugen could hear anything, but with distinct concentrating, they began to make out the low argument going on in the resting lounge.
"...don't know why they've come. I thought I'd left that life behind."
"If they are here, Fuu, then there is a chance the shogun sent them."
"Mugen and Jin wouldn't do that."
"You don't know them anymore. They could do anything. The dark one, Muger-"
"Mugen."
"-has prison tattoos. He's been jailed. Probably for a heinous crime."
"He's had those forever...though he has more now, but that doesn't matter. They won't hurt me."
"And Kiyoko? What will they do if they find out her origin?"
"I won't tell them. You won't. No one else knows."
"Fuu, it is a sad story, but it is not shameful. You yourself feared them ever finding out, you told me so when you first arrived here. I do not trust those men. I do not trust them alone with you here. I told my wife I'm staying here. I'm not leaving, until they do."
"Lee! That's not necc-"
"Mommy? I thirsty."
Mugen and Jin could hear the unspoken tensions floating out of the room, but stayed silent. Neither was quite sure what was going on, but something was. Neither of them liked being in the dark, so it was pretty clear what the dawn was going to bring. They were going to find out what Fuu was hiding, like it or not. Jin was thinking of asking around the village, maybe finding out when and why Fuu came here. Mugen was thinking of ransacking the place looking for her diary.
"I'm sorry, baby, I forgot your bottle. Come with Mommy to go heat up some milk?" Small footsteps, made slightly heavier with the new weight in her arms, walked past. Low murmuring of consolation drifted through the darkened doorway.
Jin and Mugen were about to move to their cots, when a new shadow merged at the door. They paused and listened, as they were intended to.
"I do not trust you too, as you've heard. You hurt her or that little girl, I shall kill you both. If not me, then the village will. We all love Fuu. We protect her. You're the first to ever venture here and find her. We will make you the last."
Lee walked back to the lounge, and they could hear him groan as he lowered himself to the small couch there. Jin and Mugen stared at each other.
"What the hell is she caught up in?"
"And does she need saving from it?" Jin ventured back in whisper, just as Mugen had whispered his little dynamic question. Old habits died hard, the two were learning. They were both falling back into the pattern of old times. Protect Fuu, get food, sleep. It was a mandate they'd both lived with for almost half a year, three years ago, yet it was coming back to them like it had been yesterday.
Mugen fell back asleep almost instantly, but Jin was awake and thinking. So many things change, and so many stay the same. Fuu, still the wide-eyed girl they'd left standing at a cross-road so long ago, yet now forever different. Older, wiser, just a touch taller. Still wearing that pink kimono and her hair up.
Mugen, still rough and tumble fighter, still angry, though at the world or himself, Jin had never known. Slightly more scarred, definitely skinnier, and his hair just as poofy as ever.
So much the same, so much different. Even himself was not separate. Jin removed his glasses, and studied the brief scratches on the surface. It seemed as if the lenses were reflecting old memories back at him.
First meeting Fuu, after he and Mugen had caused her place of business to burn down. The anger in her face causing it to almost turn purple, and just when it seemed her head would explode, she'd smiled and it'd eased away. Right before she'd tricked them into coming on that foolhardy journey with her.
Meeting Shiro in the rain, her sharing her umbrella and teaching him how to cook fish. Finding out her destiny, and spending the next three years trying to free a woman who didn't want to be free.
Picking up Kiyoko, a child so small, with the darkest eyes he'd ever seen. Eyes that were familiar to him. Eyes he'd...no. The memory was gone. There was someone lingering in the child's face. Someone not Fuu. Someone he knew. He would find out who did this. He would avenge Fuu's honor. It was one of the few things he'd ever been good at. Killing.
Well. Killing, and making sweet love to whores.