TILL THE LONELINESS SHADOWS THE SKY
Chapter 3 -- Questions
Be prepared for switching PoVs, characteristic of a third person omniscient view.
Alright. Here goes nothing.
"Sanzo?"
Sanzo barely glanced up from his paperwork before his eyes returned to the paper. "What is it?"
Thirty eight killed in the southern
...clashes between human and youkai forces at 9:00am yesterday,
resulting in five deaths and sixteen injured. Youkai casulties unknown; youkai
civilians known to be amongst the dead...
This whole thing is just a huge, bloody mess...
He'd missed Goku's question. Tugging off his spectacles and carelessly tossing them onto the tabletop, he swiped a hand over eyes gone too dry from hours of reading. "Say again?"
Goku bit his lip, suddenly losing the courage to pose the question a second time. But Sanzo was obviously waiting for a response, so he settled for the first, inane thing that came to mind: "It's raining..."
Sanzo sighed in annoyance. "If you don't have anything better to say, why don't you just go and look for something constructive?"
"I mean... it's unusual for it to rain so much in April..."
"Goku, just go away," Sanzo reached for his glasses again.
...One regiment dispatched to Chun Xiang, reports indicate that a local
resistance group is being formed...
.
Just get on with it. You'll never know if you never ask, Goku chided himself. So with the decisiveness which had led him to remove his limiter in the past -- let's do this as fast as possible so that I don't have time to think about it -- he took a breath and plunged into the deep end.
"I… uh… do you love anyone?”
.
The gaze that Sanzo turned on him was flatly unreadable. The very expression that he had come to recognize as a precursor to trouble, Goku's courage tucked its tail between its legs and fled.
"Ah... never mind..."
"Just take your questions and go and pester someone else, will you?" Sanzo said, the annoyance evident in his voice.
Goku felt a flash of uncharacteristic anger then -- the anger of someone who's been brushed off one too many times, on an important question, by an important person... He grabbed a chair and flopped down into it, frowning. "I don't want to."
"Damnit, Goku, I have work to do here," Sanzo growled, when the other showed no sign of moving. "Why do you persist on bothering me when I'm busy?"
"Because I love you."
The words shot out of his mouth before he could stop them. He'd meant it as a question, truly, meant to ask it, but somewhere between his brain and his mouth, it had mutated. His gut spasmed in anxiety and dread. This is just not the way I wanted this conversation to go... Maybe he didn't hear it, maybe he missed what I said again, maybe he's not paying attention...
He glanced furtively up at Sanzo's expression. Fat chance.
.
He'd expected it. He'd half expected such a stupid proclaimation from Goku, sooner or later, and he swore that he was going to kill the person who'd put that half-baked notion into his head. Love... the word had the texture of burning paper, something that had started to curl around the edges and crumble to pieces, accompanied by the acrid smell of charred carbon...
A word he'd come to shun, all these long years, and not -- not -- something that he wanted to deal with right now, not with all that work bearing down onto his shoulders and threatening to pulverize him under its load. Most of all, not something that he wanted to deal with on a cold, rainy day, with the ghosts of yesteryear hovering over his shoulder.
"Love? A quaint emotion." Sanzo slammed his papers onto the table and shoved the chair back. Spinning, he marched over to the window, glaring at the rain drops splattering against the pane. "You don't understand what it is. What a burden.. what a curse it is. It's a delusion, and nothing good ever came out of it."
"But... but..."
"You don't love me, Goku. Get that stupid notion out of your addled head."
"But I do!" Goku cried. The situation had slipped out of his grasp and gone spinning into the wind. He was upset, he was distraught, but mostly, he had a strange, surreal feeling that this was all a nightmare, and not true...
"Muichimotsu. If you meet Buddha, kill him. If you meet your forefather, kill him. Beholden to nothing, unfettered." The words came driving through the chaos to him, and it seemed that he listened to them for the first time, realizing their full import and meaning like never before. "Merely living for life itself..."
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...
.
Goku stared. And because it was too late to undo the damage, there was nothing to do but to dig himself further in.
"You don't really believe that."
Sanzo snarled. "This conversation is over."
"You don't believe that," Goku yelled back. "You can't run from attachment! It's not a switch you can simply turn off! You can harden your heart, turn back on it, deny its existence, but you loved once."
Sanzo spun, and the strange, furious light in his eyes made Goku take a step back in sudden, abrupt panic. Good sense was catching up, good sense and prudence together, and both too late.
"Who planted that notion in your head?" Sanzo hissed.
"You must have," Goku replied. He'd heard, of course, the rumors of Sanzo's mentor. Sanzo's father figure. The one who had rescued him and brought him up and taught him everything he knew.
And I know what it's like to have someone like that, and how easy it is to love him...
"You must have," he said again. "Because you can't turn off emotion on your own. But hate and anger... and losing someone you loved... those must have hardened your heart. And because you were hurt once, once, you're just running away from it."
Sanzo had gone rigid. Hands clenched, eyes gone stone cold. Harder than rock. Harder than diamonds. And the silence that hung between them sharp enough to stab right through Goku's heart.
This was not the way I wanted it to be...
And his nerve broke. He fled, before harsh words could pursue. Fled from the storm raging through his heart and his mind. Wrenched the door open, and staggered into the corridor, his throat constricting as if he were strangling. He ran then, and there was nothing but the running, the air burning into his lungs and his mind going blank. The pounding of his feet against the floor driving coherent thought aside, tearing away the world until there was only the passing wind against the moisture on his cheeks.
Nothing. Just plain blissful nothing.
And even in that nothing, Sanzo's voice caught up with him.
Muichimotsu. Non-attachment. Beholden to nothing. Because love hurts. And now you know, how easy it is for a heart to
hurt if you were only to open it...
He yelled at that voice to shut up. For the first time in his life, it was a horrible, unwelcomed presence in his head that he simply wanted far away from him. Love and hate twisted in his mind, twin serpents that devoured each other. And they circled around a single figure, a single name.
He found himself voicelessly sobbing that name, even as he collapsed into his room, slamming the door behind.
Sanzo.
And he could not tell if the tears that fell like scattered rain were drops of pain or anger.
--
Sanzo stayed where he was, staring out of the glass at a world obscured by the rain. He could have turned, to look at the doorway through which Goku had departed. But he saw no point in that, just as there was no point brooding over harsh words that could not be retracted.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, willing a growing headache to recede. He hadn't actually meant to upset the saru so much, although one had to concede that he could have phrased the words better... But when it came down to the crunch, there was no easy way of doing this, and certainly, there was nothing more effective than a verbal slap to the head to drive all the romantic notions out of it. As if he were an hormone ridden teenager still infatuated by Sentiment. As if either of them were.
...If only the kid hadn't been so blasted close to the truth.
But now you know. How easily one is hurt by love. Now you've that
you've had a taste of the pain that it brings, you'll know better. Not that you
could understand. Not that you know anything. How dare you bring him into
this...
He didn't move from the window, even as afternoon turned into evening. Stood and smoked, filling the ashtray with burnt out cigarette ends.
Burnt out. Like me. Like this tired old world.
The light shifted as the sun set, angling to falling through the window and onto his table. He turned from the glare, and his eyes followed the rays, beholding the neglected paperwork.
By all the gods, it was bad enough dealing with the crazy mess that was Togenkyo, without having to deal with the crazy mess that was Goku's emotional state at the moment. He considered simply ignoring the kid until the storm blew over and Goku bounced back... then sighed irritably as he realized that the problem wouldn't blow over until it came back and bit him in the ass first.
It was then that the order came.
"Now?" Sanzo ground the cigarette into the ashtray, and positively glared at the acolyte.
"The Three Aspects were quite adamant, Sanzo-sama..."
"Their timing couldn't be worse." He glared the pile of papers, at the chair that Goku had vacated, and sighed in frustration. "I'll be there directly."
-
For once, I'd like to tell them to take their bloody orders and stuff it where the sun doesn't shine...
Monks scuttled out of his way as he strode up the stairway leading to the shrine, clad in the full finery of the highest ranking priest in the land... and the full wrath of Genjo Sanzo, waylaid by his superiors and in an utterly foul mood.
He adjusted the diadem as he neared the doors, silently railing at the uncomfortable weight that was heightening his migraine. Without even pausing for his entrance to be announced, he shoved the doors open and strode in.
And knelt, regardless of his feelings, out of deference for gods that he hardly respected.
"Genjo Sanzo." If they were unphased by his abrupt entrance, they made no mention of it.
"At your service," he responded.
"We apologize for the hasty summons." The usual crap. The usual bullshit. It might have meant more if the summons weren't always hasty...
"Not at all." Idly, he wondered whether his irritation was detectable in his answers, polite, correct, routine. They made him drop everything and come running.. and wasted time getting to the point.
"You must be familiar with the situation in Chun Xiang by now." It was the male who spoke. "The slaughter of human families by youkai."
"Yes."
"The humans have organized a local resistance group. Their stated objective is the protection of the village, and they have called in a regiment from Chou'An."
All this he knew. That they were repeating it again could only spell bad news.
"However, we are beginning to suspect that this is more than simply a resistance movement. In the last twenty four hours, they have struck back at youkai enclaves, slaughtering everyone, women and children inclusive."
Sanzo closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. Oh, just absolutely brilliant...
"The most recent reports from the frontier indicate that this group is raising anti-youkai sentiments in region. They are gathering anti-youkai dissidents together and rallying military support in the name of self-protection. It is suggested that their true, and long term objective, is the annihilation of all youkai in the region."
"Which, if I may venture an opinion, is absolutely impossible. And utterly unncessary."
"Correct. The objective of stopping the Minus Wave and the resurrection of Gyuumaou was the restoration of harmony between the two races. Neither side will be eliminated until a long and bloody war has been waged, and countless lives have been lost in the process."
Watch for it, Sanzo thought wryly, Here it comes...
"Genjo Sanzo." It was the female who spoke this time, the one whose eyes were always shut -- against what, he wondered. "We order you to proceed with all speed to Chun Xiang..."
"...to identify the masterminds behind this movement..." the other female, this time.
"...and to take the necessary measures to arrest it..." back to the male.
"...and restore peace and harmony to Togenkyo," concluded the first female.
Bingo. Drop everything and run, Genjo Sanzo, because we, the gods, order it. "If I may delay my departure by one day... there are matters to which I need to attend..."
"Time runs short, Sanzo. Youkai and human clashes occur as we speak. If you arrive too late, the situation may have escalated beyond control. It is advisable that you leave immediately."
So much for that. So much for dealing with Goku before he went overboard. So much for anything and any plans he might have had for the next few days. "...As you command."
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TBC
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