A/N: This is my favorite one, so far, because apparently I like hurting myself.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

096. Writer's Choice: Disease Reduex

The midwife won't come.

Mugen stirs the fire so it's high and hot, hot enough to burn out the chill of a changing season and sickness and death. Fuu is writhing on their futon, nothing but skin, bones, and swollen stomach. She's half dead and trying push out a life, and Mugen knows the two things won't work together, that something is going to shatter and he can't accept losing either of them.

The sickness came on sudden and swift, devastating half of the village and leaving the rest terrified. Mugen doesn't get sick; he so rarely does, and it drives Fuu mad that when she's got the sniffles and is drinking herbal tea, he can walk through the snow in bare feet and geta and never so much as sneeze.

Yoichi was supposed to be the same. The boy was born fat as his mother and screaming like a hellion, so fucking sturdy and strong that Mugen discovered the meaning of pride the first time he held him. Four years. Four goddamn years, and Yoichi was eternally plump and healthy.

Until he wasn't. Until fever burned him up and he shit himself to death.

Mugen dug the grave, high up on the cliff above their cottage. Dug it and buried their boy, all on his own, because he had no one else. That was fine. It's always been just him, at least until it was him and Fuu and Jin. But Jin's two days away, running his own dojo, married and as fucking sour as ever.

Fuu couldn't help him. He wouldn't ask her to, even if he could. He buried his boy and didn't cry and went back to the cottage, tried to force water down his woman's throat and didn't bother with prayers, because gods don't listen to men like him.

Then she went into labor, and Mugen kissed her palm – roughly, as he does many things – before bolting from their home into the village.

"Stay away," the midwife had shouted their her barred door, no doubt shivering in fear. "I don't want to die like that!"

No one will come. No one. So Mugen – promising to slaughter them fucking all if Fuu dies, and then himself because he's not living without her, not ever again – he returns home alone, and remembers.

Women birthing in shacks and on streets and in the trees, it happened all the time on the island. Dead eyes in sweating faces, squatting or lying back or standing, pushing out bloody wet babies. Some alive. Most dead, or as good as. Animals, horses and cows and dogs. And Fuu when Yoichi was born.

The midwife had tried to keep Mugen out.

"I'll slit your fucking throat and fuck your corpse before I'll leave her like this, bitch," he'd snapped, propping Fuu against his chest and glaring. "Now shut the fuck up and help her!"

That had taken hours. Fuu wasn't quiet – she never has been – she'd screamed and howled and clawed at her knees and thighs, practically curling into a ball all in the effort to force out their fat little boy. Then he'd came, screaming and red and so goddamn angry that Mugen had known this boy was his, his in a way that went beyond having planted seed in Fuu's stomach.

She'd cried, but his woman cries so often now. Especially when pregnant. Weeps at the drop at the hat. Exhausted and sweating and (beautiful) disgusting, she'd held out her arms and took their son, crying so hard snot dribbled down her face.

"We've got a boy!" she'd wailed, and Mugen kept on holding her, terrified and thrilled all at once.

But there's no point in thinking too much of that, now. Not now. Maybe not ever, because he thinks of their boy and sees that open grave, and the old kimono wrapped around his little body, and the way the dirt sounded as it hit cold, dead flesh.

So no. He won't think on it too much.

Instead he wonders how much blood is normal (a lot, but this is too much), and wishes Fuu would scream.

"Stupid bitch," he snarls, watching her weak body struggle. "Fight, goddamn it! I can't save you from everything!"

He wishes he could. But swords and sheer determination can't help this. So he sits between her legs, not praying, leaving only long enough to put more wood on the fire, to get clean cloths, to heat water. The first time took hours, but this takes an eternity. The sun sets, and the moon rises. The moon sets and the sun rises. The moon rises again, and finally Fuu wails – thin, weak, pained – and out slides a tiny, limp little thing.

It's a girl. Her face is gray and her lips blue, the cord around her neck; Mugen curses and unwinds it, clears her mouth and nose with a finger before hold her in one hand (she's so fucking tiny), slapping her back and bottom. He wraps her in warm cloths, and rubs, rubs and rubs and rubs.

"Breathe, you stupid brat," he snarls, teeth bared and everything gone fuzzy and blurred. He isn't crying, it's exhaustion. Of course it is. "Come the fuck on and breathe!"

She never does.

Fuu doesn't wake up, not through any of it. Though she breathes, and Mugen is distantly thankful for this.

Mugen cleans up – puts the afterbirth in a cracked bucket, along with blood soaked towels and cloths. He's going to burn them, because he can't stand the sight. They're disgusting. (They remind him of his failure.) He wraps the dead thing (his little girl) in warm fabric, swaddling her tight, and tucks her into the crook of his arm.

He buries her with Yoichi, high up on the cliff. He'll make grave markers, or pay to have them carved. Fuu will want to come here, he knows it. She'll light incense and pray and cry. There's no point in it – the dead are gone, and have no fucking clue what the living are doing – but Mugen does many things for Fuu that he thinks are unnecessary. This will be one of them.

In the end, Fuu lives. (The midwife does not: three months after Mugen buried his daughter, that tiny little thing with fluffy black hair and hazy dark eyes, the woman is murdered by bandits on the road. Fuu doesn't question Mugen when he comes home with bloody hands and a dirty sword. He offers no answers, and they don't speak of it again until they're both old, and the village has long forgotten that horrible year.)

Jin and Shino come. The women sit around the fire and cry over lost babies (Shino has given Jin three, and none have lived past a few breaths). The men hide outside, uneasy with tears, rather braving the cold and a sky that threatens snow.

"Fuu still appears weak," says Jin, arms hidden in his gi. He doesn't look at Mugen, and that's fine.

"Looks a lot fucking better than before," is his answer, and it's true. She was a fucking skeleton, with thin, yellow skin stretched tight over her bones. Now at least she has some softness to speak of.

Somehow, for some fucking god awful reason, they go to the cliff. Grave markers rise up over the stormy gray ocean and it's white caped waves, sentinels of lives not lived.

They stand for a long time, guarding over nothing more than remains and memories.