Yeah I know. Laptop crashed sorry. Road home #20

It did not start immediately but instead spread slowly and insidiously through him. When he turned his back that day, as they all did, and went wandering down a path that splintered from his, and more importantly hers, it was not raging in his mind. No on that day there was only a soft, slightly bittersweet sense of sadness that their journey was complete. He had not glanced back to watch her willowy form fade down the path but had chosen to clomp resolutely down his own trail listening to the odd metallic clang and wooden thump of his geta.

Soon though the stray thought entered his head and he wondered whether she had been kidnapped yet or whether she had been able to feed her endless hunger. It soon flittered away though when he felt the light of red lanterns wash over his face.

The thoughts were mild and occasional at first, only surfacing for brief periods of time when he would wonder about her whereabouts and her safety and what she was doing. It was no problem at first he was able to carouse and drink and eat his fill with all the money he stolen and won from fighting. He happily basked in the glow of bright red lanterns with the prettiest women he could buy. His life was his again though he found himself thinking of his life with them with increasing frequency.

Then came the day when he was ambling easily through a dirt street in a little seaside town and he heard a piercing shriek. Immediately his body tensed, and his fingers itched for the blade. He nearly panicked when he saw a flash of pink fabric through the bodies quickly gathering around the source of the shriek. Habit took over before his brain could stall him and he plowed through the crowd of people with a singular purpose. Protect her protect her protect her. It rang through his mind like a mantra. The annoyed cries of those he jostled or knocked over rolled over him unnoiticed. When he reached the origin of the shout his panic died a quick and startled death. The woman in the pink kimono was of course not Fuu, just some faceless girl. The damage had been done however as the face of fuu was burning in the forefront of his mind and the unmet instinct to protect her still made his body tense and stiff.

From there on out the thoughts of her came unbidden and often until he found himself thinking of her everyday for long periods of time. The sake began to taste sour and the fights lost their luster. He began to look for her in crowds. She cropped up in his dreams, screaming for him and in distress. Sometimes she was tied to that cross again in that hellhole church, crying and crying for him. He would wake up with a pain in his chest like it was splitting in two. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before and he found that each day he was increasingly on edge and more and more unhappy with his aimless life. Soon his geta-clad feet were shifting towards places he had been with her and Jin without his directing them there. It was like one day he just woke up in Nagasaki with a burning in his chest and from there he could no longer deny that she dominated his thoughts. The need to see her sprung from a well deep within him and he could not staunch its ebullient flow.

He woke one morning after a bland encounter with a mediocre whore in a cathouse in edo with a sharp cutting jolt in his chest. The dreams he had last night had differed from his normal ones. Slowly the progression had led him from Fuu in distress and tortured to her crying out in pleasure beneath him as he drove into her. He could remember her face, lips parted, cheeks flushed. Small body quivering beneath him as she mewled his name. Just the memory of it set fire to him. He set off that day thinking only of Fuu, of her safety, her face her hair her smell. The memory of her haunted him like a ghost. He was engulfed by her and could do nothing at all to stop her siege on his thoughts. At times he grew uncontrollably angry at the situation and lashed out at his surroundings.

That night he bought a night with a skinny little girl with brown eyes and a small chest and buried himself in her, drunkenly purring a name that did not belong to her.

--------

In the months since her samurai (a generous word considering both were disgraced and one was a pirate) and herself had walked their separate ways Fuu had cut a clumsy path to Edo in the hopes of finding work and shelter. She did eventually find both and lived in a small space over a business and toiled all day for her meager wages up the street in a teahouse. It had been just a little over a year and at the ripe age of almost seventeen she had a somewhat enhanced chest (thank you very much) and a fierce will to cut her existence out of this world. She was without prospects or a family but she had garnered some attention from a small smattering of young men and the affection of patrons at the teahouse she worked at.

In particular the butcher’s son had become taken with her and ate often at the teahouse just to see her and whisper nothings to her over steamy pots and fragrant bowls of miso. She indulged him and smiled to think that someone thought of her this way. He was seated at one of her tables and staring after her quite longingly today. Though he lacked the excitement of her brief life with pirates and samurai he could provide a stable loving husband for the life that lay ahead of her and she was not to stupid to realize this.

“Fuu,” he called softly.

She turned her head in his direction with a smile. At this particular moment she felt a small shiver slide up her spine. Curiously she looked at the boy who so ardently called her name but felt no tingling creep up her back. The curtains slipped back and another entered. Before she could see him she felt the smolder of his presence. She smelled the tang of salt and most distinctly she heard the unmistakable metallic-wooden shuffle of his feet. With her heart in her throat she turned to see him frozen like a wild animal on the threshold, staring at her with an intensity that seared her and excited her and stopped her all at once.

He trembled, so slight none but her would have noticed and she melted to him at once. Her angry fearsome mistreated rogue was lingering on the edge. She was beyond overjoyed and rushed to meet him. Unexpectedly he caught her in those glorious death-machine blue banded arms and crushed her to his chest. His sharp teeth gnashed and his embrace was not at all delicate but instead almost punishing but she relished in it.

“Oh Mugen,” she purred but instead felt only the harsh possession of his lips.

And her world spun and his anxiety abated and the butchers son swore bitterly into his tea.