-1
you, my soiled teenage girlfriend
or are you furrowed like a lioness
and we are vagabonds
we travel without seatbelts on
we live this close to death
The days that followed settled into a stressful, uneasy pattern. Fuu found herself sullen and guarded around Mugen, whom she used to banter with almost playfully. He would try to prod her into one of their loud arguments, but she would just turn her back and stay silent.
She tried to chalk it up to her pregnancy, but couldn't quite make it.
---
One the fifth night since Mugen's arrival, he finally got tired of sleeping on the floor.
"Move over."
She stared up at him, holding her faded orange kimono closed. "What did you say?"
He made an annoyed noise deep in his throat, a half formed word stuck in his sneering expression. "I said move over. I'm tired to sleeping on the ground and that's a big bed you have there."
Her eye twitched, but this was Mugen and she knew that if she didn't comply now, he'd likely just toss her completely out of bed and take up the whole thing for himself. Of course, Mugen hadn't been acting like Mugen since he saw her stomach, and now she wasn't sure of WHAT he would do. Her stomach clenched as she pulled herself over to the neat side of the bed and pressed her front against the wall. The thinning straw mattress sunk a little as Mugen silently climbed in next to her.
If silence was a person, or had a personality, Fuu imagined that he was pressing himself between Mugen and her. She could almost feel the cold, heavy hands of silence on her thighs, his leg between her knees, his hot and slick tongue against the back of her neck.
And when Mugen spoke, Silence let her go as if she burned him and she could not say she was sorry.
"So…can I touch it?"
She whipped her head and gave him a wide eyed stare. "WHAT!"
He was lounging in her warm spot, and she'd never seen someone look so comfortably awkward before. His face was turned away from her at an angle, and he was looking at her from the corner of his eye. "Your stomach, idiot. Can I…touch it?"
She pulled the blankets closer around her and screeched, "NO!" and whipped her head around, huddling so close to the wall that she wouldn't be surprised if she had a small army of splinters in her forehead in the morning.
Sleep was in league with Silence and the Devil, she was sure of it. Both seemed to weigh down at her at once, and it took her a few hours of listening to the silence and knowing that neither of them were going to be able to catch the elusive vixen of sleep until she said something.
Tossing her blanket back, she huffed and shouted, "FINE. Go ahead and touch it, you pervert."
He was on her faster than anything she'd ever seen. His entire top half was splayed over her stomach, his ear pressed against the bulge and one hand near her breasts, one near her…
But neither hand moved from her stomach and Mugen slowly felt the kicking of his child and detected a heartbeat that was just out of alignment with her own. He pressed his forehead and lips of her stomach and closed his eyes. She couldn't help but gently run one hand through his shaggy hair and gaze at him in wonderment. This was the first time she'd ever seen Mugen act gently, like her stomach was some overfilled balloon that was going to break open if he pressed too hard.
He brought himself up to rest next to her, one large palm pushing open the already loose kimono under the blanket to feel the smooth skin underneath. She hadn't been modest with him when he arrived, she still had to take off one robe to don another and she couldn't really care about what he thought of her body. Let him see what one night of farewell had done to her. She had felt, rather than seen, his eyes on her every morning as she dressed, but no insult or compliment had been tossed her way. He was almost indifferent.
Now, however, he seemed obsessed with it. He tucked her head under his chin and she sniffed delicately. He had bathed recently, probably that day. She raised her eyebrows but couldn't resist snuggling further into his warmth. His heavy hand was rougher than that of Silence, but seemed to fill up the soundless void well enough.
Sleep was kind and claimed them soon afterwards.
---
Things seemed to simplify for Fuu after that. The ice had been broken between Mugen and her and they communicated better, meaning that they did at all. Hana brought up food every three days and Mugen went down every day to catch seafood.
After a terrifying bought of slight food poisoning from a bad oyster, Fuu was delirious and kept asking for castilla for her father, and she even cried once or twice for her mother. Mugen stayed up for two nights and a day with her, holding her over the privy and forcing water down her throat. The morning that her fever broke, she didn't remember any of it.
She was bedridden for a week, forced by Mugen. He was gruff but kind in his reasons. Well, as kind as Mugen could get without it killing him. "You almost died, stupid bitch, and if you die, then so does my kid! Now sit your fat ass on the damn bed and let me do everything."
As she got closer to her time, Fuu started to get worried. She hadn't felt much of the baby lately, at least for the past few days. She would sit on her bed and hold her stomach and cry, fearing for the worst.
If Mugen smelled the salt in the air or saw the redness of her eyes, he didn't comment.
But he did bring a doctor the day after he caught her with her head bowed over her belly.
---
The doctor had inquired after her health and her pregnancy and her eating habits. She described the rich food she had eaten at the tea house, the pork and shrimp and sushi.
He nodded in approval.
He eyed her warily when she mentioned her meager diet of the past months and the recent bout of bad oyster. She waved her hands around and said, "No, no, Mugen here kept me well, from what he tells me. Flushed it out of my system with as much water as he could pour into me."
The doctor, Takahashi-sama, looked at Mugen with surprise. The vagabond had snorted and muttered, "What? Back when I was a pirate, that sort of thing happened all the time. Never happened to a pregnant bitch, though, not that I saw. I just did for her what I did for my men and look, she's not dead now, is she?" He gestured at her lazily before stomping out, his pride stung.
Takahashi leaned in close to Fuu, keeping his voice down. "Fuu-san, I didn't want to say this with such a violent man around, but I would advise that you don't get your hopes up for this child. The diet you've suggested has been lacking in the proper nutrients for a growing baby. It might be stillborn, but that won't affect your chances for another child. If this one is born alive, it will be very weak. I suggest that you find these foods," he handed her a list, "and eat as many as you can before the baby arrives and while it nurses. These will strengthen your breast milk to help the child grow stronger. Again, Fuu-san, I'm very sorry."
He bowed his head as she looked over the list. She furrowed her brow and whispered harshly, "Most of these are out of season, and costly besides! Is this one imported? I'd have to travel to Edo to get this one…" She sighed. "Mugen isn't going to be happy when he sees this."
And indeed Mugen was not.
The doctor had fled the house in terror, shreds of his wide brimmed hat following him. There were rough, r-rolling insults following him as far as they would carry, and then a deafening silence.
While Mugen stormed down onto the beach to take out his wild anger on the remnants of a church, Fuu was calm.
She heard the wild cracks of breaking wood, heard the pained shouts of the father of her child echoing off the cliffs. It was eerie in how much it simply sounded like the howling wind.
She stared out of her window and said softly, "Did you lose your child too, Kaze-sama?"
When he came back, bloodied and bruised and only slightly calmer, she turned and stared at him with tired eyes. She opened her arms, her face starting to twist. He fell into them, exhausted. So much physical labor had lulled him into a deep sleep that he was sure not to dream in. Fuu could not say the same.
She maneuvered him to the bed, tossing him down roughly because it was the only way she knew how to move something that heavy. She wept over his still body for a minute before drying her eyes.
Wiping her damp cheeks on Mugen's rough red haori, she pushed herself up and dragged herself outside. Picking up a smooth piece from the driftwood pile beside her house, Fuu dug a grave full of remorse, right next to her father's. Her high keening sounded like the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls.
Mugen slept deeply through it all.
And I am nothing of a builder
But here I dreamt I was an architect
And I built this balustrade
To keep you home, to keep you safe
From the outside world
But the angles and the corners
Even though my work is unparalleled
They never seemed to meet
This structure fell about our feet
And we were free to go
---
I just really hate how Fuu eats. Honestly, dried potato? And I know very little about pregnancy, so please forgive my vagueness.
The song was Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect by the Decemberists. I think the song fits Mugen very well, at least from a FuuMu perspective.
I'll get the next chapter out soon enough, I promise!
