I hate clothes. I hate wearing clothes. Viva nekkid-ness.

Chapter Ten: Movin' Along

Light of the morning day

Sadly it will not stay

This perfect pink for too long couple of hours from now

All the sunflowers will frown and turn

For the sun is too strong

Mugen eyed the little female over the table, not entirely surprised by her bold approach. She walked around the table and slid into his lap, and he didn't even try to lie to himself that he didn't enjoy it. He did; it was one of his few pleasures, having a pretty girl to keep him company. The girl cuddled up to the samurai, idly playing with the ink at his wrists. Her eyes were half-lidded when she looked up at him, and her lips pouted prettily. "When's Momma getting home?"

Mugen sighed, standing and lifting the girl into his arms as he did. Together, they started to pace the front room, a full-on temper tantrum in the works of Kiki's stormy thoughts. Mugen recognized it from her mother's face. She was about to pitch a fit. "She'll be home soon."

Kiki pouted. "And Uncle Jin?"

"He'll be a bit longer."

"How much longer?"

"A week."

"What's a week?"

"Seven days."

Kiki thought on that. "But that's forever!"

"Nope. Know how long forever is? One year, two months, and five days."

She cocked her head to the side, thinking on just how long that had to be. "Prolly."

Mugen laughed, lifting her into the air and wiggling her from side to side, causing a spree of giggles to erupt. "Don't you even wanna know why?"

"Nope."

"I'll tell you anyways. That's exactly how long I spent in one-room."

"Why?"

"I did bad things."

"What?"

"...bad things. Things little girls shouldn't hear about from me," Mugen explained, pacing again. Though her thoughts had been redirected, and her tantrum averted, all that energy was coming down as well, making her tired and cranky.

"Tell me," Kiki demanded, fisting her hand in Mugen's hair. It occurred to Mugen that this was the first time he'd ever been alone with Fuu's child.

"No," he replied, and she pouted again, her eyes wide and innocent, and oddly reminiscent of Fuu's even if they were a totally different color.

"Please?"

"Let's just say, that I got rid of things people didn't want to get rid of yet. And I made money on it."

"Oh," Kiki replied, laying her head on his shoulder. "Okay."

Mugen knew she couldn't possibly understand what he'd said and let it go. She couldn't really understand that all those days in that cell had taught him something no amount of fights ever had. In that cell, Mugen had learned peace. Days without human conversation, his only interactions coming in the morning with the delivery of food and the removal of his chamber pot; Mugen had had a lot of time to think. What had he thought about? His life, his past, his sword, and his friends. In the end, despite hating every single day in that room, he'd come out of it a better man. It was all that really kept him going, was the thought that he was a better man than he once was.

Kiki was humming on his shoulder, singing herself to sleep, and Mugen swayed with her as she did. She was small and fragile in his arms, light to his dark. The room was dim, the sun setting, and he didn't bend to turn up the kerosene lamp on a nearby table. He was more comfortable in the dark. Together, he and she danced in that dark place, and Mugen found himself remembering things he'd thought he'd forgotten. Forced himself to forget; now forcing himself to remember.

His mother had always smelled of heavy incense. At one point, she'd worked in a teahouse, very much like Fuu when he'd first met her. What happened after was a story he'd overheard many times as a child, a story he doubted the people who raised him ever wanted him to hear.

His mother, a teahouse waitress, met his father, a fisherman, when she was only fourteen. She'd bloomed early, and had always drawn curious glances her way, but had been raised modest. She'd never reciprocated, that is until his father. They'd courted for almost two years. Love first fragile, then became stronger than anyone had ever thought it could. They'd married traditionally, in front of the entire town. Respectable, traditional. Then, on the first annual eve of their wedding, his mother became aware of Mugen's own existence, within her womb. She'd been so happy with the news for weeks; his father had been out to sea for over a month. On the day his father had been supposed to return, a big storm came up suddenly. Winds so fast you couldn't even leave your house, the sea rose high enough that it washed away the docks. It lasted for a week. When it was over, there was no sign of his father or his ship.

For months after, his mother pined. She cried, screamed, refused to eat or sleep. She tore herself apart. Around her seventh month of pregnancy, seriously underweight and in danger of losing Mugen, her only tie to her lost husband, she came around. Started to take care of herself, started to live again. After he was born, things were good for a while. A month, maybe two. Then she lost the house her husband had bought her. She hadn't worked in months, hadn't paid bills, and no amount of sympathy on her landlord's part would let her stay there any longer. She'd had nowhere to go; a seventeen-year-old widowed mother.

She'd tried many things, but in the end turned to the stop-all of money problems for women. She became a whore. Mugen spent the next thirteen years being raised by whores, always surrounded by women and warriors, and had loved every second of it. Along the way, he'd acquired three half-brothers, and two half-sisters. His mother had been very fertile, and sometimes, he thought she'd been deliberately. By the time he became a man, at thirteen, any semblance of that young, sweet mother he could recall from his early childhood was gone, replaced by a woman with a painted face and a quiet voice, who couldn't even bear to look at her oldest son for he looked so like his father.

Mugen had stayed as long as he could, raising his siblings, defending the house, and learning the ways of a woman (thank you, Suji, for your wonderful tutoring). When he looked back on those times, it only reminded him of why he was so often only comfortable in the presence of women. It also reminded him of why he'd always been careful to never father a child. Children were death, capable of tearing apart a man at the seams.

At his shoulder, Kiki snored softly and he turned to return her to her room, as he did so, noticing that Fuu stood at the doorway watching as he swayed in place with her sleeping daughter. Mugen continued past as if he hadn't seen her.

When he returned, she was still standing there, her eyes guarded but her mouth soft. "You're good with her."

"I usually am good with women. They love me," he replied with a big grin and lascivious stare. He ambled closer, until Fuu was within an arm's reach.

"I know. I've traveled with you, remember? Every other town was some girl wanting to bear your children."

That brought back his thoughts of the moment before, and a small but bitter smile replaced the carefree one of before. "You do realize I didn't sleep with those women, right?"

Her own soft smile faltered. "You didn't?"

"No. Tempting, but no. I was caught up on this other girl."

Fuu leaned her head back, her neck stretching long and pale before him and subtle scent of flower coming to him in the breeze. "Who?"

Mugen smiled. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"I would."

"Why?"

"I'm curious who could tame the wild beast."

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"Satisfaction brought it back."

They laughed together, quietly, wary of the child in the next room. Mugen leaned closer, his breath on her ear. "Jin has left?"

"Yeah," she replied, ducking her head. "He said he'll be back in a week."

Mugen nodded, ever closer. "We're all alone."

"Kiyoko's in the next room."

"She doesn't count."

Fuu cocked her eyebrow. "Really?"

"Really."

Then, Mugen kissed Fuu, right on the lips. She liked to imagine shock was what had her not-smacking him, and not the pleasure that ribboned through her at the light touch. He stepped back and smiled.

"Why'd you do that?"

"Curiosity."

"Your curiosity is going to get you hurt, Mugen." She sounded dead serious when she said that, and her eyes were dark with some untold emotion.

"Some people tell me I'm a masochist."

"Well, I'm not a sadist, so don't do it again," Fuu replied, stepping past him and starting to walk by.

He grabbed her arm before she got too far. "And who's going to stop me?"

Fuu smiled, and it was just as bitter as his had been. "You are."

Mugen let her walk away, but his thoughts were a closed circle, going round and round again. She was right.