A/N: for SkoRn3d, who wanted me to give em a go :)

A/N: i don't own sam champ.

A/N: set...somewhere in the middle of the series, i don't know.

A/N: i had to re-submit this because my title and summary had no-no words in it :(

A/N: opening lines from ken follet's the pillars of the earth. i don't own that either.

A/N: geeez, do i have enough author's notes?

ultimatum

i love you like a lion, like a thunderstorm, like a helpless rage.

.

.

.

Jesus. They were loud. In the goddamned middle of the fucking night, after a long-ass day of manual labor on the docks, after walking miles and miles and miles for food, arriving at a tavern and realizing they had absolutely nothing—with Fuu whining that she's hungry, and Muugen rabid for booze. And Jin was trying to sleep, but they were so loud.

"Mugen, I can't believe you! You've spent all of our money to go out whoring, again!"

"Maybe if you had a bit more of a figure, girlie, I'd take bite outta you for a change and we could save some goddamn cash!"

"It's your disgusting pig-man-whore self who keeps us from saving some goddamn cash!"

"Get your pointy-ass nose outta my business, bitch! And you eat enough for ten men, you fat-ass!"

And on, and on, and on. Jin groaned, rolled over, felt the dryness at the back of his throat.

You're nothing to me!—someone screamed.

He finally sat up, slammed his glasses on his nose, and stepped down the hall of the cheap inn. The hallways were already noisy with moans, shrieks of babes, and the occasional argument. He padded softly to the adjacent room, Fuu's room, where somehow Mugen had ended up?—slid open the door with a dangerous crack of wood,

"Do you children know what time it is?" His voice was deadly soft, and the moon cast a glint on his glasses, obscuring the samurai's eyes from his companions' view.

"Yeah, I do, four-eyes, and girlie here wants to hassle me to death"—

"Jin, he drank up all our money again"—

"I don't give a damn about that," he growled, his bass voice dragging the floors of Hell. "It's the middle of the night."

They were both quiet a moment before Mugen said, scratching the untidiness of his chin: "Just get bitch-face off my back, and we can all go to sleep."

Jin stared at both of them, but they could not see his eyes. Fuu felt the color drain from her face in the intense silence; was Jin going to kill and eat them both? She had to admit, though a handsome man, in the dead of the night, with the moon-glow on him, he looked spectral.

But Jin felt anything but handsome or spectral. He felt dead. "I'm going to leave you here for the night, together," he added, "and if you don't work out your problems by tomorrow, I'm done with this. Promise or no." And the efficient-minded samurai turned on his heel and left them, dumbfounded.

.

.

.

"What do we do now?" her voice was small in the silence that ensued.

"What the hell do you mean?" he rounded on her. "We go to sleep. You heard what he said: it's the middle of the night."

"No!" she shrieked, grabbed his sleeve. "He said he'd leave us if we don't work things out!"

"Pfft. Who wants fish-face anyway? And if you're concerned, we can just act all nice and shit in the morning." He rolled over, stuffed himself in a neat ball on the floor. "Provided you keep your bitch-face shut."

"Mugen, don't be such a prick," she spat at him, face aflame again with rage. "We're a trio, we are, whether you want to admit it or not."

.

.

.

Ugh, and god, he did not want to admit it.

Mugen lay on the floor for a while, his ears clamped shut against her. Finally, she huffed and rolled over, facing away from him, her breaths coming in angry little bursts.

So typical. What a dumb ass kid.

And the dumb ass kid laid there behind his back, curled into a little pink ball like something out a fairytale. She hardly looked real in the gloom of the room; Mugen imagined her lying with her mouth twisted into that wrathful little frown, hair a damned mess, body limp and pale as a fish. Nothing attractive about her at all, from the child's eyes to the lank brown hair to the bony ankles.

And her voice. Oh, gawd. A nightmare really, the way she went on and on about food, about money, about "friendship," in that high squeal of hers—for hours and hours, just talking, filling up silence with nonsense. Damn you, he wanted to say, and shut your face for once! But she never did. Just kept talking. Talking about everything unimportant, everything he didn't need to know—but keeping this "Sunflower Samurai" a secret.

Who the hell is this smelly samurai anyway? He still didn't know. And it pissed him off to no end, not knowing—what the hell was she leading them to? Did this guy really exist, or is he something she dreamed up? Someone to help her play house with himself and Jin?

He suddenly had a vision of Fuu as a kid, not herself now, but as a real little girl—a little twinge of a thing, sweet as pie like all little girls are, but alone. Completely and utterly alone. Where did she come from? He didn't know that either. And it felt strange, for him not to know, because he'd forgotten how to be curious. How to inquire. How to wonder about anything, or anybody. He'd thought himself beyond questions.

.

.

.

Dreadful motherfucker. And she had the un-luck to name him as one of her only friends.

Fuu shivered in the cold room and tried to remember what "friend" really means. Isn't it easy conversation, some teasing, some confidence, some stability? Yet they were scrounging around for food day in and day out, arguing incessantly, and now, now—Jin was threatening to leave her. The rejection was not new, but it felt fresh.

She rolled back over on her other side, studied Mugen's narrow back, the deep burgundy of his shirt, the relaxed form of his body. Mugen was always relaxed. Easy, comfortable, languid, even in combat, he moved his rail-thin body like lightning, like fire, as if he merely had to think it for it to happen!

It was magic, in a way.

But it was not, no way in hell, was it magic the way he did not take anything seriously.

Oh, I've spent all our money? Who cares.

Oh, I'm drunk at midmorning? Whatever.

Oh, I'm gonna pick a fight with the biggest person I can find, because I can.

You're a mess! She screamed, but to no avail: she actually wanted to say, Take care of yourself. Don't hurt yourself. Because he was so, so capable of hurting himself, though he did not think so.

We're all breakable, Muugen. Don't forget that.

.

.

.

"Are you awake?"

He did not answer immediately, and she did not speak until he did. He wondered if she knew that he eventually would.

"Yeah, what?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

"You just asked me two."

She was quiet. "Why do you drink and go whoring so much?"

Mugen frowned, but did not turn to face her. He could not imagine what expression she could be wearing, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to find out.

"What the hell kinda question is that? I do it 'cause I'm a man."

"Not every man does that."

"Not every man has the means, or the balls."

She was quiet again for a long time. He waited, wondering why it mattered. Why does it matter to her, if he screws every girl in every town, contracts some disease, and dies a happy death with women in his arms? What does it matter if he drinks until he's vomiting on himself and drowns in his own filth? He had no sense of "honor"—what was that word? Something some rich bastard invented to make himself a god, that's all. Mugen had to need of that shit. He was just going to drink, fuck, and die. Done.

Then: "Do you remember your mother?"

Oh god—and the images swam before him: Mugen himself, heaving over some faceless pair of breasts, himself drinking to oblivion, himself fighting crowds of lesser men—then: a woman with his hair but much smaller hands. She was smiling, but her head was by the sun, and it kept him from looking directly into her face. And the many images of himself now and the one image of her, they were too much, too separated, too wrong to be together. The man in the fight, the man in the bar, the man with the whore—he did not have a mother.

His eyelashes were wet.

.

.

.

"Who's this Sunflower guy?" he retorted. His voice was muffled and soft.

Fuu did not speak for several minutes, again, as she debated whether she was ready to tell him. The Sunflower Samurai was locked in a special place at the center of her core, an angry little dot that she rarely showed herself, but she carried inside of her like a lung disease.

She spat the word: "Traitor"—

That was him. That was the angry little dot that splattered bigger over her heart every day.

She heard Muugen's surprise. "Who did he betray?"

"It doesn't matter," she murmured, pressing her face into the crook of her elbow. She felt drained, suddenly, as if she could fade into nothing, as if when the sunlight peeked in the windows in the morning, there would be nothing but blood and tears on the floor. What would Muugen say, if he woke and found himself alone? Would he say anything at all, or would he just pick himself up off the floor and disappear into the world, without a word, without a question—without a, "Fuu?" to see if she had ever been there. No. It wouldn't matter to him.

It doesn't matter it doesn't matter it didn't matter enough to him to stay to say I love you to be what I needed what I still need—

Fuu whimpered a little, and though she clamped her hand over her mouth, Muugen still heard it.

.

.

.

And he needed something to stop the horrid, helpless sound. Please, please, don't do that I won't know what to do if you keep doing that—

"Hey. Say thank you next time." His voice was gruff, but he was finally turning over to face her. He found her face down on the floor, her face hidden in her arms. "Hey." He prodded her with a finger to the shoulder.

When she looked up, her cheeks were puffy and a little red. Ugh. He'd forgotten that she was such a crier.

"What?" and her voice was a little saggy, as if weighed down by grief.

He sat up, folded his thin legs. "I want a thank you next time I save your sorry ass."

Now Fuu was really confused. "Next time?"

He nodded, his face completely blank; she could barely make out his eyes in the darkness. "Yeah. Because you get fucking kidnapped all the fucking time, and I have to save you from bastards who want to kill or rape you. So I want a goddamned thank you." The more he'd spoken, the angrier he'd gotten.

She blinked a couple times; he saw how her eyes were heavy from tears, the way her hair was a little sticky to her forehead. Then, then! Gosh, it was surprising, but relieving, like the first drop of rain on a blistering summer day—she smiled. Wide and weird, like a kid.

"Okay." A blink with her suddenly clear, bright eyes. "Thank you for so far." And nothing had been easier.

.

.

.

He sat up in the moonlight, and she watched his silhouette. Lean, a bulging Adam's apple, collarbones jutting out from sun-scorched skin, and hair—god, his hair was as wild as his moods. Thick tufts of hair flopping every which way, sporadic, ecstatic—like a child's fingers, reaching for toys, or flowers leaning toward the sun.

Somehow, it was all so—!

Her mouth betrayed her again.

"Mugen, you're sexy."

.

.

.

Her words dropped into the night, as stark as the scars marring his body.

He frowned. "What the hell?"

And she was blushing—oh, geez, she sure blushed like a virgin. As if she'd never had a man's eyes or hands upon her, and he had a hard time really believing that shit.

"N-nevermind," she mumbled, unconsciously backing away a little bit. She looked a little like a frightened animal—a bunny, perhaps, trying to escape the eyes of a wolf. And suddenly—suddenly Mugen felt very much like a wolf, because Fuu was bright red in the moonlight, and because her hair was disheveled, falling around her face and tickling the back of her neck—one long strand falling down, down, roving over her collarbone and delving into her kimono.

What the hell? She was suddenly sexy too.

—and she was moving away from him still, to the other corner of the room.

"Hold your ass up," he growled, and she stopped, eyes riveted on him.

He stood and made his way to her, and it felt strange to do so; when had he thought he'd move toward a woman for reasons other than sex? And somehow, this was not quite sex. It was something else, something more foreign, and he wondered what the hell he was doing. But she was quiet and trembling, and it struck him again that she was a virgin, that she was untouched, that this was all new to her. He couldn't remember his first time, it seemed he'd always known—

Wait, what the hell? Was he thinking about fucking Fuu?

No fucking way. And he plopped himself down in front of her, cross-legged on the floor, his hands fisted in his lap like a petulant child.

"What do you want from me?" he blurted.

She stared.

.

.

.

What did she want? Did she want something from him? Fuu had no idea.

But when she looked him in the eye as she did now, with his brows furrowed together and his mouth turned downwards, thinking, thinking hard, listening to her oh my god yes!, she only knew she did not want to lose him.

"Take care of yourself. Don't hurt yourself," she whispered.

.

.

.

"Why?" he rasped, and he grabbed her arms, shook her, bruised her. "Why does it matter? Who cares if I don't—"

But Fuu was crying again. "I do. I care."

And he stopped, stared, stared, stared.

.

.

.

Women, he could swear, were like babies. They cried, screamed, threw things: then fell asleep, as if nothing had happened and everything was right with the world, as if nothing could touch them.

Fuu had collapsed in his arms, weary and wet-faced, like a child put through punishment. He was stunned at first, how quickly her energy deserted her; she did not swoon a pretty swoon or slam her face into him—but she floated somehow, coming to rest right in the cradle of his arms. And now she had her cheek pressed to his chest, her hair fluffing up against his chin. And, fuck, her tits against his thigh.

He couldn't move her: this was going to be a long-ass night.

.

.

.

Holy shit. Jin never thought he'd see the day.

Not only were neither of them dead, but both Fuu and Mugen were asleep—in each other's arms. Clothed. Chaste. The morning light casting a poetic glow on the two of them: Mugen leaning against the wall, head back and his typical sleep-frown in place; Fuu, leaning her head against his chest, one arm thrown haphazardly around his waist. And his, wrapped around her shoulders.

Hm. So, there was neither a fretful fuck or a long, drawn-out verbal fight. Jin scratched his head, wiped his glasses a couple of times.

What the hell?

A/N: heyy, i'd love it if you didn't favorite without leaving a review. i love you guys SO MUCH, i just wanna write better for you.