Reaping


Her feet would carry her until her callouses ached against the softness of her flesh. She thought of them with every step, salty moisture brimming the bottom ledge of her eyes just enough to give them a swollen appearance, but never enough to let a tear fall.

She was so tired of crying.

Blood soaked the sand on the beach. Mugen's was indecipherable from his attackers' and Jin's. She knew that blood often appeared to be a lot more in quantity than it really was when it pooled and coagulated, but the distinct metallic smell made her feel sick admist the burst of adrenaline and lingering ringing in her ears from the explosion as she frantically held pressure to his wounds with rags, leaning her full body weight feebly for all it was worth, sobbing the entire time.

He'd groan and contract against her every now and then, and she'd only look down at her hands, unable to fathom the possibility of meeting his eyes when they fluttered open. If she were more level headed like Jin, she supposed that she'd be comforted by his occasional and brief arousal to pain, but she was exhausted and hysterical, her vision blurred from tears and and spray of the ocean against the rocks, and as his blood thickened and clotted against the ridges of her fingernails and knuckles she felt anything but comfort; and the sight of the elderly man giving Jin similar treatment only feet away didn't help things.

She'd pulled him herself part of the way to the cabin. When his bleeding slowed enough she gripped him tightly by the blue tattooed bands at his wrists and pulled, her hands sticky enough to give her a good grip amidst her efforts. He was surprisingly heavy, given the often weightless and limber manner in which he always moved.

The man stopped her, huffing with a bloodstained blanket he'd used to haul Jin's body ahead of her. Together they tucked it lengthwise under him and rolled him onto it. It made navigating the rocks easier, and more forgiving with the sand and the chunks of rock that would've scraped his back as she pulled without it.

A curious woman from the village emerged, and proceeded to bring water and linens to bathe the pair in freshwater from the well with the linens she'd spared.

Both men were stripped and laid on blankets in the cabin, where her father's body had been covered only moments before. He'd have a proper burial soon, but the needs of the living were more urgent at the moment.

When she squeezed the wet rags over him, Mugen withdrew again, eyes fluttering open as grey irises rolled back in his head and his limbs twitched spastically.

The caretaker seized her by the hand.

"Go slow," He spoke kindly, showing her a gentler cleansing he administered to Jin. "You don't want to stress him."


It was in the midst of her father's burial that she grew conscious of the swelling on her face and body from when she'd been beaten only hours before.


Jin woke first, if only for a moment.

She didn't have any idea until she opened her eyes and looked back at him. She'd fallen asleep on the floor beside them as she had for many nights before, watching for any little movement in the darkness. Her heart skipped at any little movement, most of which came from Mugen.

"Jin!" She gasped, reaching out to touch him, and he only closed his eyes in response and appeared to slip back to unconsciousness.

In the present she'd occasionally spot a glimpse of red in her peripheral vision, causing her to snap her gaze hopefully in that direction.

She had an idea of where to find Jin, and when the time came she reunited with him and his new bride in a late summer, when the rains fell hard enough to soak the ground and the trees entirely so that the earth would squish beneath her feet from saturation.

Jin hadn't heard from him either.

She wasn't sure why, but that bugged her. The three of them had departed under some sort of pretense that they'd meet again somehow- at least Jin understood that much, so why couldn't he?

Shino asked her to stay with them but she couldn't bring herself to comply. Her spirit was restless and agitated, and at night before she dosed she would remember dull grey eyes that rolled lazily over to her when he spoke. He would infuriate her daily- at times making her swear to herself that at the end of their journey she would steal him from his arrangement with Jin and murder him in his sleep herself.

But she spent the night hysterically bargaining to any higher power to keep him alive as her slim fingers pressed his wounds beneath his bandages to ensure he hadn't started bleeding again.

So when she saw a flash of red on the road or in a teahouse and it wasn't him, she blamed him that much more.

She developed an obsession with wanted posters and public executions in every town, looking for some sort of trail to follow. Mugen was bound to be in some sort of trouble by now.

But he left her with nothing to go off of.

So after a year of searching, she directed her attention elsewhere. What would she even say to him if she saw him again, chastise him for not checking in with her or Jin? To which he'd undoubtedly respond with some insult emphasizing how little he cared, or how he'd much rather get laid. But she wouldn't let him get away with that tough guy act anymore: she'd call him out and tell him that he did care when he forfeited his sword for her life.

She wandered to the town where she met Shinsuke, and walked the the street where she'd first encountered the young man who stole her purse. Several blocks over, he was stabbed to death after she pleaded with him not to forget her. She wandered to his home that he lived with his mother, it was otherwise occupied, as she suspected.

She sat on a hill by herself, the thick green carpet under her bare toes as she watched the sunrise after she'd been roaming all night. She was looking him the direction of her own hometown where she lived with her own mother, but declined the inclination to go.

Lack of funds caused her to take up work in the next town she came across, and before she knew it fall had passed in a mild haze of more people who came and went, all touched by the pleasant charms and stories of the well travelled waitress at the tea house.

She then doubled back to Jin's, where a dojo had been erected and he and Shino had their first child. She fussed over the chunkiness of the baby as she pulled it from Shino's arms, entranced by the soft wisps of dark hair and long eyelashes. She bounced the boy on her hip and observed aloud on how much he resembled his father. She couldn't help but notice how her voice inflected up an octave when she cooed at the child and the parents smiled politely, enhancing telltale dark circles under their eyes.

'You're so lucky to have a father like Jin.' She told him in her thoughts, as if the child would hear and understand them.

She quickly felt ashamed at the longing for a father figure, remembering her father's last words to her before he was assassinated. The truth was, she didn't blame him anymore. The years of resentment and anger had melted the day she buried him beneath the ground.

But at dinner that evening, that resentment passed on to someone else.

"Mugen came here, about a month ago." Jin said matter of factly.

Fuu froze, and furrowed her brow as she stared as him from across the table. She felt her heart accelerate at a dizzying rate.

"He did?"

At the corner of her eye she saw Shino pause from eating, studying her expression and casting a knowing glance to her husband.

"He just showed up one evening, and then he said he had to go. We tried to convince him to stay longer. He stayed for a night and was gone by morning."

Fuu did her best to maintain her composure. "Well that is just typical."

Shino rested her hand on the table, as if in some attempt to touch hers. "We think he wanted to check and see if you were here. And when he saw that you weren't, and we hadn't heard from you in some time, his mind was made up."

Fuu said nothing, suddenly losing interest in her food as she poked at it.

Later in the evening she sat on a bench in the garden, listening to the song of the insects that mated in the night. The wind rustled through the red leaves of the maple tree overhead, adding an overpowering hiss to the chirping chorus. Under the light of the moon she sat with her palms against the cold stone of the seat.

A door from the home slid open, Shino stepped out, carrying her teary eyed child in tow.

"Do you always keep him up so late?" Fuu asked bluntly, instantly realizing how rude her question sounded.

But Shino only chuckled, walking down the steps carefully and shifting the infant so that he was tucked over her shoulder as she sat beside Fuu.

"Some babies sleep through the night by the time they're four months of age. He doesn't."

"Ah." Fuu replied, feeling silly about her question now. "Well if he's anything like Jin he'll never sleep through the night, he'll just wake up and not say anything and the next thing you know he's looking at you like this." She furrowed her brow and straightened her mouth in a mockingly serious and stern expression.

Shino laughed, nodding in wordless recognition and Fuu smiled for the first time that evening. She offered her arms to the older woman. "May I?"

"Please." Shino smiled weakly and passed the child to her. "He only sleeps when I take him outside."

"Well I don't blame him. I like it out here too." Fuu bobbed him in her lap, looking down for a second time at his peaceful face.

Shino watched her for a moment and mimicked her former posture on the bench, back relaxed and palms flat.

"You're good with him." She said at last. Her voice was gentle and measured, just like Jin's. "Have you ever wanted children?"

Fuu shrugged. "I never really thought about it." She spoke earnestly "I always assumed I would someday, but now that I'm older it just seems like there's so much that could go wrong, you know? My mom raised me by herself, and she was so good at making it feel normal at the time, but sometimes I could tell it was really hard for her. My father... wasn't very helpful to her."

Shino slowly traced an in decipherable shape in the dirt beneath her feet. "I know. My first husband..."

She trailed off for a moment and Fuu understood the context, though she'd forgotten completely about how Shino and Jin met when he'd leave in the night to be with her in the brothel.

"I remember that."

Shino nodded, as if grateful that she didn't have to recount the full story.

"... I was always afraid to bring a child into a world in that marriage. I used to attempt precautions so that it wouldn't happen. But then I felt so ashamed because it was my duty as his wife to be a mother."

Fuu listened silently, shifting the child so that the back of his head rested against her arm as he kicked his legs in his sleep.

"I can't imagine." The young woman murmured.

"But then when I met Jin, I wasn't sure that I would even be able to conceive a child because of all the precautions I took in my last marriage. When I told him, he told me he didn't care."

"Yeah, that's Jin for you."

Fuu's thoughts yet again turned back to Mugen. For almost two years since they went their separate ways she'd been hoping to run into him, but since then that hope had turned to anxiety and fear, and now to anger and resentment, to this very moment where she felt mystified by the fact he had walked this very ground- if only briefly just one month ago.

He was alive and well. Probably drinking sake and screwing some whore inside or outside a brothel at that very moment.

What was she hoping to find by meeting him again? She only wanted to see him and talk to him. But what about afterwards? Just because she'd changed, was it fair that she expected him to be changed too?

"Hey Shino, I need to ask you something." Fuu spoke and the babe's eyes fluttered open again, fixated on hers in a puzzled expression as if he was unsure if he was fine resting in her arms or not.

"What is it?" Shino asked, tilting her chin and smiling tiredly down at her son.

"When Mugen came, how did he seem to you?"

Shino turned to her, her expression gaining seriousness. "Um. It's hard to say, because I only met him once."

"Did he seem like he was doing okay?" Fuu asked, unrelenting.

Shino thought for a moment before she spoke, as if thinking carefully about how to say what she wanted to say.

"I think so. He startled me to be honest, because he approached me when Jin was in the middle of a training session. I was tending the garden out here, and he approached me from behind and he looked a little... rough. I think it was that tattoos that originally frightened me."

Fuu shook her head. "I'm sorry about that, that's normal for him. He's never been good at making friends."

"He asked for Jin and that's when I remembered who he was from Jin's stories. I told him he was occupied at the moment but invited him inside for lunch. He was pretty happy about that. He seemed awfully hungry." Shino chuckled as she spoke the last sentence.

Fuu smiled a little, thinking of what it was about Mugen's foul language that gave someone as perceptive as Shino the signal that he was happy. And she also found herself both in awe and incredibly grateful that a lady like Shino invited a thug like Mugen into her home to eat.

"Like Jin said, he only stayed for the night. He didn't divulge much information about where he'd been or where he was headed. We offered him a bed and he was gone by morning. But he seemed... alright."

"Do you really think he was looking for me?"

Shino blinked at her. "Well, what else would he come here for? He didn't ask for anything, he didn't seem like the type to want to 'catch up' with us."

Silence set in and passed for a moment before Shino spoke again. "If you find him, what will you do?"

It wasn't terribly long ago she'd get the same question about the search for her father. Back then the answer was so simple, until it became more situation was all the more complex, as she originally simply wanted to make sure he was alive and well, but now that she had confirmation of that it wasn't enough.

She then told Shino about the day her father died. She told her about the man who chased her down in a sunflower field, who molested her and bound her and beat her, until Mugen showed up when she was positive that he wouldn't- because she'd released him from his debt to her and told him he was free to go.

But he crossed over to the island and found her anyway.

She stayed with Jin and Shino for two more months with a new murkiness in her heart.

Mugen had disappeared again, but she remembered thoroughly how relieved she was when his flesh felt warm again, and how her heart skipped a beat when his lips parted ever so slightly on their own when she squeezed water onto his tongue to moisten it. She was so overjoyed that she kissed him lightly and quickly over scar on his brow.

Shino was insistent that she stay and could contribute to the household in a meaningful way. She did chores and tended the garden and took their son out for walks in the afternoons when he was fed so that Shino could lie down and get some sleep. The child had grown fond of her, and she grinned every time he cooed in an attempt to say her name, "ooo!" as little chubby hands grabbed for her.

Fuu took him to the hill overlooking the dojo as she had many times before, the place she'd sat through the night on her first visit. She spread out a blanket in the grass and teased him with toys until little giggles erupted from his chest. He was strong enough to sit upright on his own now, but if he laughed hard enough he'd topple over until she caught him.

"You're a handful, just like your mom says." She told him, laying on her stomach and resting her chin in a hand. His dark eyes smiled back at her in response.

"But your parents both seem so mild-mannered. So tell me, which one is the secret wild-thing? Your mom or your dad?"

He screeched briefly and made a fist.

When he was tired he'd lay on his back with his soft feet curled to his chest, pulled a rattle to his mouth.

She lay beside him on her back and closed her eyes, feeling the residual heat of the setting sun caress her body as the gentle breeze brushed into between her toes. It dawned on her in that moment that she had to leave soon, that this life belonged to Jin and Shino and not to her. But she was happy to be a part of it and to have the affection of the little creature beside her.

She awoke with a gasp when something hard nudged her in the ribs. Her eyes shot open and she tensed defensively, eyes squinting at the last of the blaring light of the brilliant gold sun. A dark figure with matted hair towered over her. Fuu flinched reflexively, squirming to the side on her palms and throwing an arm protectively over the baby.

She glared upward at at intruder who appeared to be looking down on her in a shadowy figure of matted thick hair and a sword over the shoulder.

It couldn't be him. She opened her mouth in an attempt to scream or yell until he interrupted her.

"Oi, girlie. Four-eyes got you babysittin'?"

She squinted, recalling that harsh voice from memories of pain and anguish. The emotions ripped through her and her breath caught in her throat.

She rose to her feet slowly, her eyes burned and teared against the sun, but when his shoulder barricaded the light from her complexion the familiar shapes and colors flooded her vision. Red hue over his shoulder and chest. Dark skin made weathered by his days in the sun. Black stubble spotted under his jaw and nose and over his chin. His eyes were considerably softer than the first time she saw him, stormy grey and focused on her.

She remembered how angry she'd been, and glared up at him. She opened her mouth to say something.

"Where the hell have you been, Mugen..."

"I was worried sick..."

"Isn't there a brothel you should be at?"

"I've been looking everywhere..."

"Since when is a jerk who brawls daily so hard to find?..."

"Jin said you left without telling him anything..."

She closed it, her frown remaining as she said nothing. He stood before her, as tall as he ever had been, his posture still as his long, lanky arm hung at his sides, as if ready and accepting of any small fists or angry insults that came his way.

She balled a fist, and relaxed it immediately after, impulsively choosing instead to throw her arms around him, eyes squeezed shut as she inhaled. His heart beat was loud against her ear on his chest, threatening to burst from his ribs.

She recalled pressing two fingers to the pulse on the side of his neck in the night for reassurance. It bumped weakly against her finger, fast and thready, but there. In the days afterward it slowed and became stronger, until it was a proper bounce of vessel.

His arms moved awkwardly- perhaps reluctantly, but she couldn't help but smile against him as they rested subtly at her shoulders.

He smelled of salty sweat and warm musk, but it wasn't bad at all.

She wasn't angry at the moment.


A/N: I'm not really sure what the point of this is, or where it's going, if anywhere. I just rewatched the series for the first time in years and got the Fuugen bug!

If the intermittent switching between past and present seemed confusing to you, it was intentional. I usually like the break up my stories individual scene by scene with a divider, but chose not to do that here quite so strictly for the effect of a little bit of confusion because Fuu's dialogue is often like that, flitting from one thing to the other and I can just imagine that being in her POV would be just like that. I usually don't like writing what I consider to be overemotional/ crying female characters but I actually like Fuu a lot- and she'll still considerably young after the series ends so I think it's fair for her to be emotional about things! Thanks for reading!