4 - Around her
She was knocking at the door, and he was looking up at the sky. He'd tried to brush the thought under the carpet, but to no avail, his mind kept asking and asking, "what on earth are you doing here?"
When a middle-aged woman opened the door, a breeze coming from inside the house betrayed warm apple pie and tea (they both welcomed it). Her kind eyes first fell on Fuu, and she smiled at the girl, but as soon as she saw Mugen, she looked like she'd blow the whistle on him at any moment. But Fuu, noticing this, quickly told her that it was okay, that he was friends- at least for the time being.
And like this they were ushered into the house, ushered to a chair and to a nice portion of the apple pie they'd guessed before.
"So," Fuu said, between mouthfuls of the creamy dessert, "How's mom been doing, Shino?"
The woman's eyes were downcast for a second, but when her gaze met Fuu's it looked bright and honest, "She's fine, only sleeping now."
"Haha, it makes sense," the girl said, "It's logical since it's like, what, ten? Eleven?"
Right there and then, a clock struck twelve. Mugen chuckled to himself.
"Oh, look!" Fuu exclaimed, and placed the package with medicine on the table before Shino. A quizzical look appeared on her face, and she lifted an eyebrow at the girl, but said nothing.
"Caught red-handed, huh?" thought Mugen, as he helped himself to another slice of pie. Free food, good idea to follow her.
Sudden coughing from a room nearby interrupted whatever kind of moral issue about thievery may have been going on, and both Shino and Fuu sprang to their feet and rushed indoors, leaving a certain vagrant alone with a lot of delicious apple pie…
Hushed voices reached his ears, and he could guess what was going on, and somewhere deep in his conscience, a little voice told him that he should feel at least slightly bad about it.
Fuu swept into the room again like a hurricane, her features a knot of anxiety and worry and alarm. She rushed out of the front door, without saying anything, and he was left there, perplexed and slightly vexed, too. Shino came into the dining room shortly after.
"Oh, heavens," she whispered, her voice the perfect picture of dismay.
"What's with her?" Mugen asked.
"She's gone to the doctor's I'm afraid," the woman explained, "but that's far from here, I wish she wouldn't be so careless."
On the spur of the moment, Mugen stood up and ran after her. There was something odd going on with him, since when did he leave unfinished apple pies to run after boyish emo teens?
Whatever. He soon caught up with her.
"Hello again," he told her dully.
"What are you doing here?" she snapped at him, which took him by surprise. Soon she stopped running to catch her breath, and they walked side by side, silent for some time.
"I don't know," he confessed at last, "Annoying you?"
She muttered something that sounded pretty much like, just what I needed.
"C'me on girly…"
But she cut him in mid-sentence, "What are you doing still here, anyway? Don't you have a life or something?"
"Yes, and it's fucking wonderful," he replied, with a wolfish sneer that would've scared her if she hadn't been so preocuppied.
They rattled at each other for a while, from where Fuu learnt that he was trying to get away with murder (and smuggling and piracy and a list of other vile deeds) by keeping a low profile for a while. It became apparent that he wasn't the best kind of gentleman out there, breaking the law in broad daylight and everything. But, it was just her luck, c'est la vie and stuff.
When they finally came to the doctor's residence, it surprised Fuu how little she had to wait to find the man standing on the doorsill, prompt to go. He was quite an amazing doctor, actually- always ready, whichever time of day (or night) it was. He wasn't too old either (no, she was absolutely positive he wasn't forty yet), and perhaps that's why he was always so well-disposed, but he wasn't too lively either… a rather stoic character.
Just like Shino had done, the doctor eyed Mugen critically through his impeccable glasses. Mugen shot him back a rather arrogant glare, and tension built up around Fuu, though she couldn't possible explain how that had come to happen.
"Uh, Mugen, this is doctor Jin," she intoduced, her voice coming out surprisingly small and meek. Their mutual reaction came completely off guard to her, but puff, see if she cared.
"It's my mother, doctor, she's not well, again…"
Surly, Mugen trailed after Fuu and Jin as they made their way back to Shino's house. He kicked a pebble as he walked, still perplexed at himself for having lived by the book for such a long period of time. Well, he'd had his fair share of uncommon events that day, maybe that could explain it- saving the kid, then running away with the kid and hiding with the kid in some dark room without attempting anything disreputable despite her not-unpleasant features… following the kid to some house where they gave him apple pie, what the fuck, and then following the kid yet again to some smartass' doctor's house and FOLLOWING THE KID STILL ONCE MORE to the apple pie house, yes that must be it, he must be completely losing it this time, point of no return.
He thought up a long, deliberately obscene mental curse.
Something that Fuu said out loud got Mugen out of his reverie, and as the real world fell into its very welcome place once more, he immediately noticed something in the atmosphere that smelled quite fishy to him. Not only to him, apparently, because dr. Foureyes was squinting his eyes towards somewhere to their left, where the street was shrouded in darkness due to a wrecked streetlight.
They weren't made to wait too long, because out of an alleyway crept a couple of sinister-looking characters. Mugen recognized them not because of their appearance but because of the clothes they wore- those were henchmen of Mukuro's just as certainly as he was not. What he was not so sure of, was whether they'd recognized him. But if they hadn't he wasn't about to kindly show them.
He and Jin exchanged a quick glance, and he was pleased to see how well the doctor had understood him- the man grabbed Fuu's wrist, who might as well get used to being flagged about (she'd been quivering slightly upto then, shifting her uncomfortable eyes from Jin to Mugen, from Mugen to Jin), and off they went, a neat cut-and-run as if they'd planned it beforehand.
Mugen was quick to knock the two guys out and teach them a lesson about assaulting people at random. Though they both had had guns with them, he knew how these people liked to procede during an attack, so it meant virtually no difference to him if they had them or they didn't.
He calmly jogged towards Fuu and Jin, only to see from afar that they'd gotten into a situation vaguely similar to the one they'd just escaped- two people, two guns.
As he drew closer, though, he saw with mild surprise how Jin got into some weird karate kamai, and, one blow, two, three blows later lay one of those assailants on the ground, KO'd. And there he was, turning to do the same with the second guy, when voila! Both Jin and Mugen, who was now close enough to be able to lend a hand if needed, had to look on, mouth agape, at how Fuu hit this guy repeatedly with some chunk of wood she'd found lying about.
"They weren't much of a threat, if she can do that so easily," Jin commented, and Mugen could only nod and feel dumbfounded.
A/N: chapter four! Go Mugen and doctor!Jin!