TILL THE LONELINESS SHADOWS THE SKY

Chapter 1 -- Rain

Clouds arrived with the morning, hazy gray ones that hung low in the sky and promised rain by the evening. They set out in silence, Sanzo pausing to light another Marlboro as the last one burned away. The smell of the smoke drove away the smell of the rain, that insidious stink that burned down the lungs and made the shadows seem just a little darker, made the world seem just a little more annoying, and the made the sutras across his shoulders weigh just a little bit more.

Annoyed, he flicked at one, his sandals churning up dust from the dry road. It was April, that month where the weather did as it willed. It hadn't rained a while... which promised...

"Sanzo?"

He glanced up. Somewhere in his musings, he'd reached the turn and walked straight on. Suddenly angry with himself and the unforgivable carelessness, he snapped the cigarette between fingers and dropped it to the ground, grinding it under the heel.

"Sanzo, are you okay?" there was only innocent concern in Goku's eyes, concern that made him want to grab the youth and shake him and tell him that he didn't need protection, didn't need concern, that he perfectly fine on his own, thank you. Instead, he turned and strode past Goku in silence, trying not to look at the sky and those dark, rolling clouds.

It would rain all night. He was sure of that.

-

They ate and drank and were merry, Sanzo noted, leaning back and half way through a new cigarette. They talked of little things, little anecdotes and how Gojyo had gotten his hand stuck down the toilet when more than slightly drunk, of Hakkai's new found interest in gardening and how Hakuryuu had taken to ratting and depositing the vermin at the foot of the bed in the morning.

How quickly we settle back into our old routines.

They had gone forth, a journey that lasted three years and countless lifetimes, and they had changed the world. And now they were talking about potatoes.

But it was to be expected, really. They'd looked for normality, all of them, and normality had found three out of the four. Sanzo sighed mentally and tugged at the high-necked collar.

"Another beer?" Hakkai asked. He responded with a brief nod, and was rewarded with a chilled silver can tossed in his direction. He paused before opening it, content instead to enjoy the cigarette while it lasted. Of course normality hadn't found him... he was a Sanzo and he'd made the stupid mistake of coming back to Chou'An where the Three Aspects had metaphorically handed him a mop and told him, "Welcome back. Now go and handle the clean-up."

Humans attacking youkai, youkai attacking humans... it made his brain hurt just thinking about it.

He was long past due for a holiday, but Sanzos didn't have days off, it appeared.

-

There was a squeak and a rustle, and abruptly, one shoulder felt slightly heavier than the other. Sanzo glanced to his right to find Hakuryuu perched there. It nosed the beer can and stared pointedly at the food on his plate, mostly untouched.

"Kyuu?"

"Sanzo, please don't feed him," Hakkai said, "He's fat enough as it is."

"Kyuu!"

"So you say," Gojyo retorted to the dragon. "Soon you won't even be able to fly."

"Na, Sanzo, if you don't want it, you can always give it to me," Goku prompted.

"Idiots," Sanzo muttered, reaching for his chopsticks.

-

"Stay for the afternoon," Hakkai had suggested, the same time he'd suggested lunch. "I know you're busy, but surely you can take a day off.."

The monocled youkai was nothing if not thorough, Sanzo noted, as he watched Goku shovel cake into his mouth. Cake was a scarce commodity here, which meant that Hakkai had either gone through the city with a fine-toothed comb, or had learnt, somewhere and somehow, the arcane art of baking.

Not that Goku would have minded having more dumplings. Food was food was ... a real waste of time, in his opinion, but it was the one thing that made the ape happy. The simple pleasures in life.

"Cards?" Gojyo suggested, but Sanzo shook his head and glanced at the threatening sky outside. "We have to head back."

"You could stay for the night..." Hakkai, who would work a miracle within the next few hours to produce two more beds and more space in their already cramped apartment.

"I have business to attend to," Sanzo replied briefly. "Goku can stay if he wants."

"Hmm?" Goku looked up. "Really?"

"You're old enough to look after yourself, idiot," Sanzo said with a touch of frustration.

He missed the look that Goku gave him then, a slight, puzzled frown and a worried crease of his eyebrows. The look vanished by the time Sanzo looked up to regard him with expressionless amethyst eyes. "Well?"

"I'll stay for the night. See you tomorrow," Goku announced.

"Fine, then I'll be leaving. Don't eat Hakkai and Gojyo out of house and home," he warned, then to Hakkai, "Don't feed him. He's fat enough as it is."

"Hey!"

"Do you need an umbrella?" Hakkai asked.

"I'll be fine."

"Ah, now I can have the rest of the beer to myself," Gojyo grinned, reaching for another can to prove his point.

"Whatever," Sanzo replied, and stepped out of the door.

-

"Hakkai," Goku asked, as Gojyo cleared the dinner plates away. "Do you think Sanzo got back in time?"

Hakkai glanced at the pouring rain and smiled his usual little smile. "I should think so. The rain just started."

"Why does Sanzo hate the rain?"

Hakkai glanced across to where Goku was standing, elbows against the window sill and gaze directed out towards the darkness.

"I think... that's a question you should ask him yourself."

"But what if he won't tell me?" Goku asked.

"Then... that's up to him."

"Hakkai..." Goku turned back, his face troubled. "I..."

Hakkai waited, as the sounds of Gojyo washing up came clattering from the kitchen.

"... Nevermind," Goku started to turn back to the window, chewing on his lower lip in an unconscious gesture of worry.

"You love him, is that it?"

Goku spun back, his eyes wide. "What...? I .. no.. I ..."

"You're blushing, saru," Gojyo said from the doorway. "What's up?"

"I.. nothing," he bit back.

"Thinking of that cranky monk? I'm sure that he's home and dry in his gilded temple by now."

"No.. I mean, yes.. I mean.. argh, damnit!" He cast a glare at Hakkai, who chuckled.

"Nothing wrong with that," Hakkai replied.

"Nothing wrong with what?" Gojyo asked.

"Nothing. I think I'll--"

"Catch." Gojyo flung something at him. Instinctively, Goku plucked it out of the air, to find himself cradling a silver can.

"Drink up, birthday boy," Gojyo grinned at him.

"I... fine," Goku plunked himself down at the table.

-

It was in a sort of haze that he stumbled to bed, or, rather, to Gojyo's bed, since the half youkai had generously volunteered to sleep on the couch. Perhaps he shouldn't have drunk so much beer, but looking at Sanzo, he'd always thought that downing a 6 pack was simply a matter of course.

Evidently, it wasn't.

"Hakkai," he slurred at the other occupant of the room, who was busy drawing the curtains. "About earlier.."

"Hm?" Hakkai stilled his movements.

"It's not love, is it?" Goku said, staring dreamily at the ceiling. "It's just that.. I'm supposed to protect him, and.. but.. I can't protect him from himself. The rain and all that.. he's upset and I can't help him. I can't make feel better. He just locks the door and smokes all night."

"Hm," Hakkai replied, noncommittal, and stepped away from the window to sit on his own bed.

"He... brought light into my world," Goku said, drowsiness starting to creep into his voice. "I wish I could do the same for him. He's trapped, just like I was, in his own mountain... what do I do, Hakkai?"

There was silence from the other end of the room, and for a long moment, there was just the patter of raindrops across the window pane.

"Hakkai?" Goku turned, to see Hakkai sitting in thought, one eye obscured by his monocle, the other half-closed. He was about to repeat his question when the older man looked up again.

"Emotion is a strange thing, Goku. It's unpredictable; it defies logic." Hakkai smiled, a small one, but more real and genuine than any Goku had seen in a while. "Sometimes, the solution is not to rationalize, but to let things carry their course. It takes a lot of patience, and it may take a long while, but remember: you never really lose until you fall and don't get back up again."

Goku wanted to mumble a comment, but the swirling warmth of the alcohol and the sheets carried his voice away, and he shifted into dreams before he even realized it.

He saw... Sanzo standing by the lake, staring into its troubled depths as the rain splashed across its surface, destroying any reflection. He was not smoking; it would have been impossible to do so with the heavy drops that poured down from the heavens.

"Sanzo?" he called, but the man didn't seem to hear him. The priest unfurled his fingers, and Goku saw that he was holding a flat pebble. Wordlessly, he flicked it towards the water, where it hit a ripple and sank immediately, spreading ripples of its own.

"No change," he heard the muttered words.

"There is change!" Goku cried. "There's always change, if you look for it."

Sanzo brushed at his soggy bangs, but made no sign of having heard.

I can't reach him, Goku thought in despair.

"Sanzo..."

The priest turned and headed away from the lake, wading through the puddles.

"You'll get your socks all wet," Goku said inanely, following Sanzo as he stepped through the main doors of the temple, leaving wet footprints in his wake. Various lower ranking monks rushed up, asking Sanzo-houshi why he'd walked home in the rain and would he need anything, and where was Goku-san...

Sanzo silenced them with a look, and continued on his way, as the acolytes murmured in dismay at the trail of water. Goku raced after him, in time to catch him stepping into his room.

"Sanzo! Wait!"

The door clicked shut in his face.

"I..." Goku stared at the wood work in frustration.

'Thinking about that cranky monk?' Gojyo's voice drifted to mind.

'You love him, is that it?' Hakkai's words.

"It's not love... is it?"

--

"I'm back!"

"And how much did you drink last night?" Sanzo asked, not looking up from the stack of papers in front of him.

"Ahhhhh.. how did you know?"

Sanzo snorted and rolled his eyes.

"Just about 5 or 6 cans..."

"Alcohol's meant to be drunk, not quaffed, idiot."

"But you... you do it all the time!" Goku protested. "Did you get caught in the rain?"

"No," Sanzo replied briefly. "Now run along."

"Why are your sutras wet?"

Sanzo glanced up then, his eyes narrowed. "Alright, so I had to run the last hundred meters or so... what's it to you?"

"I..."

I love you somehow found itself on the tip of his tongue, and Goku choked back the words in a hurry. "I was worried, that's all."

"Idiot. A little bit of rain never hurt anyone." But Sanzo looked away when he said that, and his fingers tightened unconsciously around the brush.

"Sanzo..."

"What is it, ape? Can't you see that I'm busy?"

"Nothing. See you later," Goku vacated the office as fast possible.

-

The hallways were polished marble, the pillars stone and goldleaf, all beautiful, polished, cold cold cold...

His footsteps, aimless and wandering, were the only sounds that echoed through this pristine world, this unreal place that was the antithesis of everything the real world represented. Here you found part of Heaven, the unchanging, flawless perfection, a world encased in stone and crystal and left high up on a shelf to be admired.

Here you could almost believe in immortality, because this was what immortality was like... beautiful, polished.. dead.

There is no change here.

Goku paused.

It is not, I think, for you.

"It's not for you either," Goku hissed, slamming a fist against the unyielding surface. "There's nothing here, just work and more work. No one's happy here. Everyone's trying to find that middle path or whatever and attain enlightenment. No one really lives here. I should get you away, someplace.. some place where we can be happy.."

But a flash of uncommon insight came to him then, a voice that might have been Sanzo's, might have been Hakkai's, but neither had ever said this to him : If there is no happiness here, then neither is there sadness...

That's the path he chose, isn't it? Non-attachment, the middle road... neither to experience the joys of friendship nor the pain of loss, to continue, from day to day to day, on a level path that goes neither to the highlands nor to the low...

To simply exist, unchanging in a changing world...

"Keep pounding the wall like that and you're going to break your hand."

Goku spun at the sound, startled. Sanzo stood a few paces behind, leaning against a pillar, arms folded across his chest.

"I... I...." he foundered, lost for words.

"Not that again," Sanzo snorted.

"I thought you were busy."

"I was." The reply was flat, void of any emotion. Totally unreadable, as blank as a slate...

He's like this place, Goku realized unhappily. All pristine perfection, untouchable, removed from the world..

But.. but.. isn't that the way he wants to be?

Sanzo took a long drag from the cigarette and resisted the urge to stick a finger into his ear. Something was up with Goku, and whenever that happened, he caught faint whispers of this little voice calling his name, this voice that had haunted his dreams and dogged his footsteps until the day he'd set the boy free from the cave on the mountainside.

Not that it was any use telling Goku to shut up, no matter how badly he wanted to do so. This appeared to be totally unconscious.

And hammering him over the head with the fan doesn't help either.

So he'd jabbed the brush into the inkpot in \annoyance, risen from his chair and gone to hunt for the source of that voice. To find said source pounding pillars in the middle of a deserted corridor. Gods, the boy had no sense. None at all.

He wasn't about to break the silence, now that he had it. Wasting time bandying words was not his style. Sooner or later, Goku would tell him what was on his mind, or he'd at least calm down and stop yammering in his mind.

Goku opened his mouth, then shut it, rather comically. Then, something rather unexpected, given the circumstances... "Have you had lunch?"

One golden eyebrow rose in surprise. "And you were banging walls because you were hungry?"

"No.. not really," Goku grinned, that age old grin that never changed whenever food was mentioned. "It's just that I think better on a full stomach."

"Idiot. You don't think at all, full stomach or no," Sanzo said in exasperation. "Very well, whatever shuts you up."

"Shuts me up?"

"Come on," Sanzo said, detaching himself from the pillar brushing past Goku.

"Great! Can we have mean buns, Sanzo? Please? Please? Pleeeeeasee?"

And the oft-used words that had not been heard on temple grounds for some three years once again echoed through the corridors, bringing with them a breath of life and sound to the quiet halls...

"Shut the fuck up!"