Two years in the making

Fuu practically leapt into the hot spring in an attempt to shove down her embarrassment at her own comment. She had had her robe of in about two seconds. An all time record at this point. ‘You smell good.’ You smell good? What the hell was she thinking? Oh, well I think I’m just going to compliment the half naked Mugen in the hallway about the fact that his scent is wafting all over the hall and incredibly amazing. Yep. That was just about all she was thinking. Or not thinking in this case. If she had been thinking the mouth opening and the words coming out wouldn’t have happened. Neither would the blush that had flooded her cheeks either.



“AAARG!!!!!” She couldn’t help it she was so frustrated with herself. She shoved the folded washcloth into her mouth in order not to scream.



“STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!” she growled at herself, though with the cloth in her mouth it came out more like ‘stew head. Stew head. Stew head.’



Fuu shook her head. Look at her. Even without trying she could come up with new and lame insults. She could just see the next one. It would probably be something like ‘Potato face.’ Yeah she could see that. Her and Mugen in one of their grand fights from the past, he calls her a bitch and she responds by shouting potato face at him. Yep. Then Jin’s eyebrow would twitch and she would know that she had reached a new level of idiocy. That was her. Amazing Comeback Fuu.



It was stupid really. How just looking at him in a towel had made her into a bumbling idiot. She had seen him naked once. Ok well she hadn’t really seen. She had been hiding from him in her own nakedness and caught a glimpse. That had been enough for her really. Mugen’s body was covered in long corded muscles. His skin was almost a golden brown. Kind of like the top of a bun after it had been taken out of the oven. She slouched slightly. Did she really have to compare his skin to food? She already compared everything else to food. The only other thing that popped up into her head as a comparison was warm tan sand, but she didn’t want to picture Mugen and sand at the same time. She could already feel her chest constricting.



She flung the thoughts from her head by sliding her entire body beneath the hot water and then slowly raising her head above the surface. Of course she had removed the wash cloth from her mouth at this point.



She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall of the tub and attempted to drown her thoughts in memories and images of Katsu. Her sweet completely sane Katsu. A man who had never once insulted her in the almost two years that she had known him. She had been traveling with Mugen for what? A year in total maybe? And he managed to call her every name in the book. Well knowing Mugen he probably knew more but she had never heard that many different names come out of one human beings mouth for one person. Of course his favorite had been bitch but there had been many others. Plank and flat chested were just two that were close to the top. She wasn’t going to even bother listing off all the others. It would probably just make her head hurt even more than it already was.



ARG!! And she was already off track. Katsu! Katsu! Katsu! Think about him!



She relaxed finally seeing that her mind would stay on her husband to be. She didn’t love him, but he did have an amazing quality about him that made her giggle and blush in his presence. He was handsome. Very handsome. His skin was darker than hers, but he didn’t look rough. His dark brown hair was long and straight. It was always pulled back into a pony tail, much like Jin’s, but shorter. His hair was probably the same length as hers. His eyes are probably what had intrigued her the most when she first saw him. They were dark like the ocean but had flecks of silver in them. It was like a picture of the ocean in his eyes. Raging waters with white sea foam streaked across it.



When he had introduced himself he had kissed her hand like a gentleman. She had been blushing the entire time. Months down the road he had showed up at her doorstep with flowers and had asked her if she would go to a festival with him. That’s how things had started. He had taken her out and they had danced for hours. She couldn’t remember a time when a man had danced with her like that. He had kissed her goodnight and bowed a farewell. She didn’t sleep that night she was so excited.



Those first few months she had thought she was in love with him. He was perfect. Why shouldn’t she be in love with him? He loved her. She knew that. No man would treat her like that for over a year and then ask her to marry him if they didn’t love her. He was willing to put up with her for the rest of his life. That was more than any man she had ever met had given her.



But she kept on hearing about pirate ships and a wandering samurai. She kept on asking questions, and then the wandering samurai had disappeared from all gossiping travelers. For some reason that hadn’t bothered her half as much as when the pirate ship stories had stopped rolling in. In the back of her mind she knew that these stories might not be about either of them. But she could still hope couldn’t she? Yes she could. She just didn’t have to tell Katsu about it.



It was probably a month after the stories stopped that Katsu had proposed. She said yes. Not a second after the words had left her mouth was she up in the air spinning around in Katsu’s arms. It was something that she couldn’t understand. She was so happy but at the same time she could feel a part of her in her chest crumpling up.



And then she saw them again. Both of them. What kind of crap was that? That wasn’t supposed to happen. It was fate or destiny or something stupid like that. But at the same time it couldn’t be because if it was fate or destiny than she would have seen them months ago, before Katsu had proposed. Or at least seen one of them…



She grabbed the scrub brush and her soap bar that she had brought and lifted them to suds up the bristles. But she stopped as the familiar scent that had filled the hallway before greeted her senses. Tears slid down her cheeks slowly before she brushed them off and filled the bristles with her own soap destroying the scent from before and filling the air with cherry blossoms. She scrubbed her skin slowly. Removing all the dirt she could from the day. The dirt and the sweat. She had become so dead in her actions that she didn’t even realize when she was done and half heartedly climbed out of the bath.



She dried her skin quickly and wrapped the white robe around her body, her hair soaking the cloth around her shoulders making the ivory skin their visible beneath the foggy white. Fuu didn’t really understand why she had fallen for Mugen so long ago it wasn’t normal. He wasn’t the nice guy who was sweet to you and held your hand. Mugen would sooner cut your hand off than hold it.



With a dejected sigh Fuu left the hot spring sliding open the door and closing it slowly behind her before making her way down the hall.



And right into Mugen, who hadn’t moved since she left him.